


Reunion

by twii2ted_8333335



Series: Reunion AU [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst and Humor, Author being a tease, Awkward Conversations, Awkward Families, Binge Drinking, Biting, Boys Kissing, Confusion, Developing Relationship, Disney References, Drama, Drinking, Drinking Reference, Drunken Kissing, Family, Family Drama, Family Feels, Fluff and Humor, Humanstuck, Humor, I promise it'll get happier, Kissing, Male Friendship, Multi, Neck Kissing, Old memories, Past Relationships, Relationship Issues, Reminiscing, Sassy, Some Swearing, Unresolved Emotional Tension, minor arguing, possible feels, rating went up, resolved tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-04 18:25:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 29,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3080897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twii2ted_8333335/pseuds/twii2ted_8333335
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard finding out that you dated your son's boyfriend's father way back in the day and still have feelings for him. It's hard and no one understands. No one but him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wednesday

**Author's Note:**

> Sweats nervously o.o;;  
> I've never been so nervous and excited to post something that wasn't a sexcanon  
> This wasn't even written in the dark of the night. I was fully conscious for all of this. 
> 
> Thank you to [bookwormally](http://bookwormally.tumblr.com) and [3vad127](http://3vad127.tumblr.com) for letting me use their headcanon names for the ancestors  
> (^︴ω︴^)

Be Orpheus:

It's nearly five when you walk through the door of your home, muscles aching from how hard you're holding the suitcase clamped between your fingers, head pounding from the pain of your pulse just having to push through there. Today was a rougher day, which is fine. They happen and you go through them whether you like it or not. You can handle a tough day at work every so often.

You tend to draw the line at coming home to blaring music that makes you wish you'd never bought your kids the stereo system. It isn't loud enough for the neighbors to complain about it, but it resounds and echoes off your own walls, through your eardrums and into your pulsing veins. It doesn't put you in a terrible mood, but you know you're going to wind up snapping at one of your boys if they try talking to you now. 

You wander around slowly, going through the motions of getting settled down. Your work items get put away; your tie comes off and so does your jacket. Your shirt gets two buttons undone so that you can breathe properly again. You always did joke about how the standard shirts for your company made you feel stuffed up and uncomfortable. It wasn't a complete lie. Your shoes come off last and are placed neatly on the stairs, on the step beneath Cronus' sneakers. 

You head up the stairs just as slowly and calmly as any other day, trying to focus more on your breathing rather than the fact that both Eridan and Cronus are singing along to the entire Mulan soundtrack. You swear you don't know what gets into them sometimes but at the moment, it frustrates you. You're tired and possibly hungry too and you are becoming angrier with every step towards their room that you take. You tell yourself that you're going to let them have it this time, that they need to start acting their age and need to be doing homework or getting a job in Cronus' case instead of singing and acting like fools for no reason.

But then you actually go into their room and see them smiling and laughing through the lyrics after they both try to falsetto Mulan's voice during I'll Make a Man out of You and you just can't bring yourself to say anything. You watch them sing and push jokingly at each other and you can't find it in you to be angry that they are acting on the immature side. You can't find any anger in you at all. They're your boys and you know sometimes they need a chance to stop and indulge in a little happiness. Eridan's grades are satisfying for the most part and you aren't in any rush to have Cronus with a job and out on his own. It's not like he's absorbing all of your money. He hardly uses any of it, whch should probably worry you more.

When you look in that room, you don't see a reason to be angry. You see your boys back when they were fourteen and ten years old and Eridan had to be placed on the table to dance at Cronus' level. You see them when they were doing this every night as an unofficial after school activity while they waited for you to come home and make dinner. You see two brothers bonding over what could be the last thing they have in common at this point: music. 

You see a reason to write this day off as pleasant.

You head back down the stairs, and for the first time in a while, you do actually make dinner from scratch. There's no take out on the table, and really only the potatoes are from a box. The food is all finished by seven, and sometime after six your boys did finally come down and start helping. You're almost too exhausted to eat the fruits of your labor but you manage to juggle that with listening to how Cronus and Eridan spent their day. You don't pick up any serious bits of information until Cronus mentions one particular name that you've trained yourself to keep an ear out for.

"See, Kanny's already trying to shove off to college, v-which ain't all that bad, I mean I'm proud of him an' all, but does he really gotta brag about it? I don't ew-even think he knows he does it. He'll just go on and on like he alv-always and drop it like a bomb in the middle of a sentence and it's damn frustrating." He flicks his wrist before you can even lift your head to say anything about his language. You nod, satisfied. You yourself cursed, but never around your children, and you expected them to do the same for you unless they were beyond pissed. It was a mutual understanding that you all did fairly well to uphold. The flicking was a habit the three of you picked up when Eridan started it as a younger child, hating the words more than anyone you'd ever seen. You're pretty sure he swears more than any of you now.

"That's a completely different story though. I just needed to get that off my chest. Pa," You have no clue when or why Cronus started calling you that but it strikes you as oddly sentimental in this moment. You think you used to call your own father that. You can't quite remember. "Kanny's dad v-wants to meet you for dinner like sometime next week. Or whenever you can. He just thinks you guys should meet since me and Kan have been goin' out for a while, yanno?" 

You nod absently in response, already mentally going through your schedule to see when you could spare a day to rest and then confront Mister... Mister... "Cronus, have you ever told me Kankri's last name?" You can't seem to recall it, and the distraction is nice. The idea of meeting your son's boyfriend's parent is just making your head spin. Maybe you should just request a day off. You need one badly.

The look on Cronus' face says that he likely doesn't even know Kankri's family name. It doesn't surprise you. You think he forgets his own from time to time. Hell, you forget your own from time to time. 

Eridan clears his throat and speaks up, "V-Vantas. Vvvantas." He puts a little extra emphasis on the "v" after his stutter, though you can decipher through the odd sounding letters. You make a mental note to ask him if he's getting made fun of about it again, even unintentionally. "Kar's his little brother and unlike some people, I pay attention to little details like last names. God, Cro he's ev-even your boyfriend." 

You all finish up dinner as they have a small spat over how to be a quality boyfriend and at least attempting to hang on to precious bits of information. You want to sleep now, exhausted beyond the point of comprehension and actually lacking in work an overload of work for once, but you still have a few calls to make. Cronus messages Kankri asking if two days from the current is fine with his father, which it turns out it is with both him and your company. It's fine by you too. Now you have two days off in a row and you can happily sleep the majority of one of them away. 

Except, as you're closing your eyes, ready to pass out for the night, it occurs to you that "Vantas" sounds far too familiar for your thought process to _just let it go_.

Oh great. Now that song is stuck in your head. 

Be Sainath:

Two days is barely adequate enough time to clean a house a prep for a dinner as special as this one, but you've had less time to throw together bigger assortment of foods and pulled it off nicely. One never knows their true abilities until they have to assemble a full blown meal for a collection of five growing boys. Especially when one of those boys had been a Captor. You were friends with that boy's father. You had grown up with that man. You knew what a Captor's appetite could do to a man's refrigerator. 

Two days is hardly enough time to set out every plan that is playing out in your head from the idea of having a complete family Vantas-Ampora dinner to it just being you and Orpheus in the dining room, chatting over your kids, your lives, just everything. That one seemed a bit much for just a parental meeting but you just had this feeling. This would be it. You couldn't blow it. 

"You don't think I'll blow him, do you?"

Karkat chokes on whatever it was that he was drinking; Kankri very slowly sets his book down in his lap to look at you. They both give you this look, like you've just said one of the worst things in the world and you honestly can't think of what you did just say. "Don't look at me like that. I'm being serious. I want to give off a good first impression. I really don't want to blow off this first opportunity."  
You stare at them expectantly and they stare back at you, still with those looks of complete "what the actual?" 

You sigh, grab a notepad and pen, and started planning. You'll try asking them again later. You don't have time to be dealing with their hearing problems, despite the doctor saying they can both hear perfectly fine. You wonder if it's a parent-child thing. You remember being like this with your mother too sometimes too.

"Karkat, you're grounded."

"What?! Why?!"

"Well now for shouting at me. I was kidding before."

"Dad!" 

You just chuckle at him. You remember it being like that with your mother too. She loved pulling your leg every so often. You think you'll give her a call later, once all this Ampora dinner mess is sorted out. That's providing it ever gets sorted out; you are having major troubles with coming up with ideas to impress Mr Ampora.

Do you even really need to impress him? 

"Kaaaaaankri...!"

"No, father." 

You groan and lean over the kitchen counter. This is going to be harder than you thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Conscious  
> For  
>  _all of it_


	2. Thursday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was so much trouble to get uploaded and I really have no clue what I did wrong  
> So two hours later than what I wanted but still here  
> Yaaaaay~

Be Orpheus:

"Vantas... Vantas..." This was going to drive you insane. While you managed to fall asleep the previous night, the 10 hours of rest did nothing to ease your mind on its thoughts. You still have no idea where you've heard Vantas before and you really wish you had asked sooner than this. Two days is not enough time to figure out why that name is haunting you. Two days is not enough to do all the necessary research to actually satisfy your head.

What's worse is that Cronus refuses to let you do anything, and Eridan joins in with him once he gets home from school. _It's your day off, pa; take a rest, dad; just relax for a while_. You don't know how they manage to stay so calm and relaxed all the time. You feel wired and stressed and possibly nervous about having to make an impression on somebody's parent tomorrow. You meet new people all the time so you aren't worried about being social or anything, but this is not a business trip. This is far more important.

"Maybe I do need rest. This is getting out of hand." You force yourself to sit down and find something on TV to watch. You spend about an hour channeling your energy into getting overexcited about game shows before apparently falling asleep. You don't remember feeling tired or even shutting your eyes but the next thing you know, Eridan is waking you up for dinner and Cronus is bringing it to you on a silver tray that you don't remember owning. You're a little dumbfounded by the surprise but it outs a smile on your face.

Your boys climb into bed with you as you munch on your dinner, and you don't regret spending the rest of that evening in a big Ampora family pile, watching _Family Feud_ , being a stereotypical sitcom family. You don't regret it at all.

At least until you all fall asleep there and Eridan practically shoves you off the bed in his unconscious state. Then you're a little miffed.

Be Sainath:

You hum cheerfully as you make your way through the store, Kankri by your side and Karkat likely still angrily sitting at home and ranting at the younger Captor boy about how absolutely insufferable his brother can be and how he can't wait until Kankri finally leaves the house for a larger college. It's a normal occurrence, one that you find happens only because Karkat doesn't like the idea of his family leaving, insufferable or not, so he thinks he can get his brother to stay and prove his big words wrong. A few years ago it may have worked but you all know now how futile it is. A bittersweet thought it is indeed. 

"Father? Is everything okay? You stopped in the middle of the isle." Kankri places his hand on your shoulder, his voice low so as not to startle you completely or cause alarm to other customers. You look at him, and see the gentle concern in his eyes, the small part of his lips that's always present, the soft curves of his face that just scream to you right now how he's still just a child.

You do not believe you are having this crisis now when you need to be shopping for dinner tomorrow. For Cronus' father. You can feel your thoughts get even more flustered and cluttered and you look away from your son to breathe. As your mother always said, no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, a breath can save your life. The stress washes from you as you breathe in a trained manner, one you've mastered over your decades of living. "Yes, I'm fine. I just needed a moment to be lost is all." You smile assuringly, kiss your son's forehead and go along your merry way, humming once again.

The trip is fairly uneventful without your younger son there to rile things up, but you find you don't mind the change of pace. It's sophisticated and relaxing and feels like that first wave of beauty that brushes over you at the sea, as odd of a comparison as that is. It feels serene.

It feels wondrous up until you're ready to leave and you run into somebody who you'd much rather avoid. He isn't anyone special, just a co-worker who apparently has nothing but to do than remind you of a fact you'd rather the world just ignore. He comes up to Kankri and greets him in that way that adults do when they still believe a child is the twelve year old they knew ages ago. He calmly asks how he's been doing, not ignoring you, just directing his attention elsewhere. Your knuckles are white on the grocery cart. You hope it doesn't happen this time. He's gone conversations without bringing it up. You hope this is one of them.

"How's Mr Vantas over here doing? He's being awfully quiet over here." You sigh a little, wanting to just move along, check out, and make tonight's dinner even more extravagant than you'd intended to before. You know it's just such a little detail, but when he greets other co-worker's children, you know he says how is your father doing, or how is your mother doing. You've heard him each and every time. 

" _Father_ ," Oh, how you love your boy for putting that offended emphasis on your name like that, "is doing fine. We're having visitors over tomorrow so he's just flabbergasted is all. Now if you will excuse us, we do need get going. It was nice speaking to you." You have never loved your son so much as when he tugs on the end of the cart to pull you into a check out line. It's moments like these that have you realizing he's going to be fairly safe out there in the world.

The trip falls into a calm again, though you do still feel the tension in your neck and shoulders from that encounter. You sigh as you start up the car while Kankri loads the groceries into the the trunk. You really shouldn't let it bother you, especially since he's one of the only ones who's ever denied you being a father to Kankri and Karkat. He's certainly the only one who's semi-permanent in your life. You _should_ tell him off one day, but not in a grocery store, if ever. He isn't worth your words.

You feel Kankri's hand on your shoulder again. It's apparently his turn to give you a kiss, just a quick cheek one. He moves his hand to yours and squeezes it, almost enough to hurt. "You'll always be my father. You are the man who raised me and who cared for me when I needed it most. You'll always be my father and Karkat's too. You don't need to be genetically related to us to justify that." You smile but say nothing. 

The ride home is quiet. Kankri taps away at his phone which strikes you as odd for a moment since he, like you, isn't a big fan of texting. You suppose Cronus must be extra talkative at the moment. 

It isn't until you get home, and Karkat half shoves a sketchpad in your face that you realize it was him Kankri had been messaging the whole way home. Your boys out away the groceries as you look over the drawing your youngest whipped up in the ten or so minutes in took you to get home. You fingers trace over the sketched family portrait of you and your boys; you laugh a little when you see a familiar pouting Ampora in the top corner. You hope Karkat will solidify this picture because it honestly is beautiful. You don't think Pyrope but a lot into your son's life but if nothing else, she did bring art, and you will forever be grateful for that. 

You set the sketchpad down carefully then storm into the kicthen, a grin on your face again and, soon enough, one boy under each of your arms who are both getting a whole lot of loving that you know they'll protest but never forget. Good. You don't want them to forget these days, the ones that have their brains at high peaks, the ones where their memories and opinions will form the most. You want them to have these years be their happiest. You want them to be happy with how their lives played out and with who raised them, despite what others have said. You want them to be happy.

Later, as you're all settling down to play a game over dinner, you start making plans for dinner tomorrow and how to truly impress Mr Ampora. You want to make him just as happy as your boys and you are going to put that into your cooking. 

"I need to watch a new station. I sound like the chefs on TV." In the other toom, you hear your boys laugh at your observation.

Yes. This will work out perfectly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mainly just getting up family relationships right now and background stuff  
> Yes I dropped a huge bomb of information in the second chapter  
> No I don't care if that's technically bad writing  
> I can do worse  
> Iprobablywilldoworse >:)


	3. Friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh this took a while. It just started getting so long and detailed and I absolutely love this chapter  
> Favorite one so far actually

Be Orpheus:

You wake up well into the afternoon with your boys still curled up on the bed with you. You should yell at Eridan for not heading off to school that morning or Cronus for not doing something productive. You should take something away for the weekend because of it, but like when you came home and saw them having the time of their life, when you see them still sleeping on either side of you, you just can't find yourself to be angry. They look so calm, so happy to just be there in bed by your side. It reminds you of when they were much younger, back when you and their mother had first separated and they were having a rough time with all the stress and drama.

You settle down a little more, carefully pushing your arms beneath them and pulling them closer to you. Eridan stays unconscious, actually curling up closer to you which almost makes you tear up, but Cronus wakes from the movement. He sits up, stretches with a yawn, then looks to you with a lazy grin. "When'd you get back up here? Last I heard, you were on the floor, pa." The brat gives a laugh that you half punch his arm for and you shake your head at him. Crazy child. Although you don't really know when you got back on the bed now you think about it. It doesn't matter so much now. What _does_ matter is that you get showered and ready for that dinner tonight. Cronus never really told you a specific time -- you don't think one was set up -- but it's quarter to two now and dinner is normally around six or seven so you decide that that would be an appropriate time to arrive. Yes. Exactly.

You run a hand through your hair. This is going to be a stressful few hours if you're already having flustered and chopped up thoughts. A long, long few stressful hours indeed. 

Be Sainath:

They say the early bird gets the worm, and quite frankly, you believe that now. You originally intended to start dinner at the usual time, but you figured an hour would be enough to finish dinner so you started at six instead of five. You deserved a little relaxation time before an incredibly important family meal, right? Right. Unfortunately for you, by taking this route, you missed getting your perfect worm because at about a quarter to seven, your doorbell rings and Kankri is telling you your guests have arrived. You have a few side dishes ready but the main dish is still cooking and you're currently mixing sauce in a bowl. 

Huffing a little in disappointment with yourself, you step out of the kitchen, still stirring up the sauce in the bowl. Karkat follows behind you, having been keeping you company in the kitchen while Kankri kept an eye out in the living room.

You really aren't expecting who you see in the door. 

Of course, there's little Eridan, ninth grader, on a neutral friendship ground with Karkat despite being a year younger. They're still in the same grade, Eridan comes over from time to time mainly for project cooperation, and you're glad to see he came along. He surprises you a little but he's not part of the bulk of your pounding heart and wide eyes. Cronus is there, obviously, so no startling comes from him. You had fully anticipated the older Ampora child. No, you're looking at their father, Mr Ampora himself, because the moment you saw him, you recognized him instantly. How could you not, even without the scars across his face? True, they are more healed and faded, and his hair is not only shorter than the last time you saw him, it's also brushed back and you swear you see a little bit of grey in the strands too. 

You drop the bowl of sauce in your hands in your dumbfounded state. Somehow Karkat manages to reach it before it manages to reach the floor. You absently mumble a thank you, looking over Orpheus Ampora fully, trying to take this new image in. All you can see is the teenager that you went to high school with ages ago. All you can really see is that reckless boy who visited you every day at home the way his son does with yours and the one who stopped returning your messages once you both went off to separate colleges.

And all the while he's looking at you too, trying to connect the dots, and you see the exact moment when he's on the same page as you because he lets out this tiny little "oh" sound. He's just as surprised as you are right now. Good. Now you don't feel quite so out of place.

"Wait a minute." Three of the five other people flinch at the tone in your voice: your two boys and Orpheus. Oh how wonderful! He remembers that too. "You have not seen me in a good twenty five years, and all you can say is "oh"? Karkat, hand me that bowl. I'm going back to cooking. Kankri, please set the table and make our guests comfortable." You receive the bowl from your youngest and turn to the kitchen again. Before departing, you look over your shoulder at Cromus, taking a brief moment to look over his attire. He cleans up rather nicely, still in very casual wear but his hair is brushed instead of slicked back. "Cronus, dear, you look wonderful but I'd prefer if you waited until after dessert to make any moves on my son if that's okay?" He gives a stiff nod, his eyes wide like a student who hadn't been expecting his teacher to address him directly. You find it rather cute.

Alone in the kitchen again you set down the bowl of sauce and place your head in your hands. You sigh, already exhausted. This dinner is definitely going to be one of the more interesting ones that you have ever given. 

Be Orpheus:

You have never been so mind blown in your life. 

That's a lie. You immediately think of one time, and then immediately wonder why that came to your mind. Granted it did involve Sainath and you are in his house right now, in his presence, for the first time since high school so he is on your mind. And, again for the first time since high school, you really want a hard drink. You doubt he has anything like that in this house; he never was one for drinking. 

You need to sit down. So you do. You legitimately walk into the house, find a seat, and plant yourself into it. 

"You know, if I remember correctly, only cooks are allowed into the kitchen, and the last time I checked, you were the furthest thing from a cook." Of all the seats in the house, why did you choose one in here? You must have passed several in the living room and yet you still went for the one you had laid eyes on from the front door. You feel the collection of eight curious eyes watching the two of you carefully and safely from the kitchen doorway. 

"Well, I am a cook now. Haven't poisoned my boys at the very least." Sainath still hasn't looked at you, but you're hoping that's just because he's in the process of making dinner, not because he's miffed at your reaction to seeing him. It's not like you aren't excited or anything. You really don't know how to react to this so you don't say any more.

Instead, you look over the two boys you've known for two years at least, then over at Sainath and his much more grown and rugged form. He has something of a thin beard going on, just enough to make him look more mature than the teenager you parted with years ago. Karkat and Kankri are thin but you can see in their faces that they're well fed. They're both wearing semi-nice sweaters and jeans that look tighter than what they're used to. If they take after their father then you know they have much looser pairs for casual house lounging.

You notice though that they look very little like Sainath. Sainath is darker in skin tone and hair tone and even his eyes. He has the nice chocolate brown colors, soaks up the sun easily to keep up the pretty natural tan instead of fading into an odd paling over the years. His eyes, what you remember at least, are wide and soft and you can barely tell the difference between the iris and pupil, they're so dark. Kankri and Karkat, though they look like each other, they don't have the same soft, dark tones their father have. Their hair is jet black and their skin is a much lighter color, tanned but from sun alone, not from family genetics. Kankri's eyes are an entrancing blue, one that Cronus says captured him from the start. Karkat's are a deeper blue, almost green in certain light, and they hide something of a delicate touch behind the slight squint of disapproval. They're both very beautiful boys, but they really look nothing like Sainath. It baffles you because you know Sainath was not one to swing for females, unlike you, so he wouldn't have married off and gone down that path. He had always talked of adopting but all those expenses on a single income just sounds so... difficult. You can't say implausible because he obviously did it and quite frankly, you did too. Your wife left once Eridan was four, just old enough to remember he even had a mother. You raised them on a single income, but you make a lot of money working in the business you do, working for the Peixes. You don't know what Sainath does but at the end of high school, you remember his dream job did not pay enough to raise two kids by itself. Yours didn't either at first but you had a wife who also had a stable, fairly well paying job. It was just baffling and, quite frankly, amazing.

"Pa, you coming or are you just gonna sit at the table with that look on your face?" Apparently in your deep thought you hadn't noticed the world around you revolving. Sainath and Eridan, of all the people in the house, are setting out food on the table. Kankri is double checking the silverware and adding large serving spoons to appropriate dishes. Karkat is setting up drinks. Cronus is standing in front of you with that pitiful look in his eyes, the one you see when he knows you're thinking about his mother. She wasn't the best person in the world, you both agree you could have done better, but she gave you two beautiful sons, and she had stolen a part of your heart over the years. You like to think you took a piece of hers too but it's often a wishful thought. 

"Yeah." You say with a voice that makes even you flinch. It's small, vulnerable, one you hear very little nowadays. You catch Sainath's eye and you see a familiar little look of worry in those big brown eyes. You clear your throat as you look away. "Yes, I'll be there in a moment." You can't do this here and now, not when you have memories of Sainath coming back, and not when you have a dinner to still try and impress at. You still have this want to show that you raised your boys well, that you treat them well, that you are a good father. The determination is a little overwhelming but with your current mental state, you can't be blamed.

There are six chairs, two on the sides, one on each end, and you're a little unnerved sitting at one of the end seats. You do it at home, sitting at the head of the table so to speak, but this isn't your home. It's not your familiar domain and you have no control here. You also have to look at Sainath if you stare straight ahead and the fact that he's still a little miffed at you, and holding a very large carving knife for easy cutting and distributing of food doesn't help your nerves. Kankri sits on your right, with Cronus next to him; Eridan sits as close to you on your left as he can. Karkat sits as close to his father too. You get the idea that they're in that stage where they do enjoy each other's company but they're both too stubborn and childish to say it in a way that they can both understand or accept. It's almost cute really. You find yourself patting Eridan's leg under the table, a little reassuring couple of taps. He returns them to your hand. You wonder if maybe you're still not quite composed after your little analysis in the kitchen.

Dinner is quiet at first after Cronus quite literally moans at how good the cooking is. His face instantly goes as red as Kankri's sweater and yours warms up too. You all have a light laugh session and dig in. You have to admit, Sainath's cooking didn't get any worse over the years. You're no food expert but god damn, he needs to start a show or something. He would dominate against those other chefs. 

You're getting ready to dive in for seconds when Eridan pipes up hesitantly, "So, uh, dad? How-How do you and Mr V-Vantas kn-know each other?" You look up at him and he immediately looks down at his plate. His son half reprimands him for pushing around a few vegetables that he's obviously not going to eat any time soon. God, he really hasn't changed at all. It's so strange to see and hear the same teenaged boy in a man's body. You think you like it. 

You clear your throat again, going back to your own dwindling food. "We," You pause, trying to think of how to phrase this in a way that won't make your children uncomfortable or make this situation awkward. "We were close in high school." You nervously hope you can leave it at that. You don't know about Sainath's kids but yours did not know about your high school life at all, and you generally like it that way. But of course, Eridan gets a little more curious and wants you to elaborate, and Sainath is giving you this stare that is burning you to the core. He knows you're not saying the whole truth and he knows that you're embarrassed about it but it's not in the way he thinks you are. This is going downhill fast and you're going to say something horribly wrong in the heat of the moment at this rate. 

Karkat suddenly stands up, eyes wide and staring right at you. "Oh. My. God."You freeze, not knowing completely what's going through his head right now, but it can't be good with a reaction like that. "Guys always go through that phase in high school where they're like maybe I do like guys, hey, let's try it out — Oh! Nope, I was horribly mistaken, dicks aren't my thing, I'm sticking to the Leijon side of the road — " He stops himself after that, and you watch his throat constrict as he swallows hard. "B-because, you know, they like cats? It's a joke." The flush on his face says that it is not a joke. It was a slip of the tongue, but nobody says anything about it. "A really bad joke that Kankri's probably going to lecture me for later but I don't care right now, because you guys totally did that let's try to be gay thing in high school together because you were close and trusting and it just didn't work out, did it?" 

Sainath is dying across the table. He's moved his plate so he can rest his forehead on the tablecloth and just laugh at his son's words. You try to keep yourself straight and under control but watching Sai and thinking about how Karkat is just almost too accurate is making it hard not to let out a few chuckles. 

"No, not," Another chuckling fit. "Not entirely. There is one little difference."

They wait expectantly. You look to the man across the table the same way, waiting for him to finish his laughing fit.

"The difference, my dear boys, is that it _did_ work out. We dated all through high school." Sainath stands up then, smiling widely. "And with that, I have to grab the dessert. Have fun, Orpheus!" He waves as he departs to the kitchen. You stare at him with a gaping mouth. He did not just leave you with four teenagers who are confused, probably a little disgusted, and weirded out. You sigh. Why on Earth did you like him again?

You look over at Kankri, feeling his gaze on you, and you swear you see flames in those eyes. Sainath may not be outwardly upset with you and your actions so far, but his son definitely is. He's connecting all the same dots of information that you did when you walked in the door and he is not enjoying the picture it's creating. You glance over at Cronus, but he's slowly scooting away from his boyfriend. You know very well that a Vantas Wrath can be threatening, but you also know when to really be scared. If Cronus is being wary now, you are in serious trouble. 

He does nothing to you though; he merely stands up and begins collecting the few empty dishes there are, distributing out seconds to those who want them. You don't dare ask for more now. 

Be Sainath:

Dinner is wrapped up with no other mishaps, and dessert smooths over as easily as the icing on your cake did. The full stomachs and satisfied sweet tooths calm everyone considerably, you think, as does the fact that you tell your boys that they can go off now. Karkat heads upstairs with Eridan. You soon have to tell them to turn the TV down on the game they're playing. Kankri and Cronus depart to the living room, watching what you think is the cooking channel, but you aren't sure. It isn't a show you recognize. You head to the kitchen to clean up. Unsurprisingly, Orpheus follows you. However, he does surprise you by helping you out with the dishes. You wash a few, he dries a few, but when you go to put those away, he starts washing and drying and all you can do is go along with it. You're both quiet, but not awkwardly so. Neither of you have anything to say at the moment. 

There's a moment when your hand touches his as he's placing a dish down and you're picking them up. It's more than cliche that you both stop and glance down at your hands, touching just enough to notice. For a moment, you feel like you're in your mother's house again, younger, smaller, with a fluttering heart and a desire to just be like this for as long as you can. It's a dangerous place to go, it's a dangerous thought to think, but you can't help yourself. You never did get rid of those feelings. You only moved on from dwelling on them because you had a career and a family to worry over. You couldn't keep thinking about lost loves from your past. 

You still haven't moved, and he hasn't either. You should, you both should move on and apologize and pretend this moment never happened but you don't think you can. Despite all your bitter feelings earlier, despite all things wrong with this whole situation, you just want to stay like this.

You both immediately spring back into the motions of dishes once you hear movement though, unsure if anyone was coming into the kitchen. Nobody did but the adrenaline still pumped through you hard and fast and it makes you both laugh when you have the same realization. 

This is dangerous. This is exciting. This is something that you have missed for twenty five years.

You both talk quietly after the ice feels rebroken, telling vague details about your life after you both lost touch, never asking more than a normal parent or person would. You do reluctantly say your boys are adopted but Orpheus never says anything about his boys' mother outside of the fact that they have one, and that he was married to her. You think it may be someone you know and that's why he won't tell you who it is, or perhaps speaking about her is just too much for him. It pains you seeing him look so distant and disheartened when he mentions her so you don't push it.

They leave far too soon for your liking; you really do enjoy the company even if it was opening up a can of worms for two of the party members. You say goodbye to them at the door, Karkat having already said his farewells and Kankri giving Cronus his own little private goodbye. You know they didn't do anything too intimate unless your son really is just that good at those things. _That_ would be a bigger surprise than Orpheus tonight. 

The Ampora boys go off to the car, but you stop their father before he can. Your hand is in his now, which you hadn't meant to do, but it's too late to go back now. You look up at him, remembering that he is a good half a head taller than you unfortunately. "I," you pause to bite your lip, your heart pounding in your ears, "I did like seeing you again. I missed you over the years even if I didn't really show that tonight." You had every right to act the way you did though. You were mad above all else at the time. "Don't be a stranger, please." He looks dumbfounded and unsure, but he does give you a little nod. You let him go, slowly. You let him go for the second time and you're trusting him to not leave forever. 

This is so dangerous. This is putting so much on the line. 

You need a drink. You need a drink and you really need a friend. 

Once the kids are asleep and you've calmed down for the night, you phone up a friend you know will be over as soon as possible. "Sae-Yon? I need help." He sounds a little tired but he agrees to come over once he's dressed. You hear the grin in his voice as he asks you a quick question. "No, I'm not pregnant," you deadpan, "Just please come over soon." You hang up on his light, lispy laughter. You just shake your head. He's such an idiot sometimes but you wouldn't trade him in for the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tired Psii is a funny Psii yes


	4. Kankri's Bonus Round: Saturday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick little chapter from a son's pov for some family background development, a little clarification, etc  
> I debated on doing Cronus' half with dualscar for this day buuuuuut I decided cro was kinda in the dark so you guys are in the dark too

Be Kankri:

When you come downstairs the morning after the awkward parental reunion, you find your father being tenderly cared for by a good friend of his. There's a damp washcloth on his forehead and another draped over his stomach, likely with warmer water instead of cool. You see one of two empty bottles of alcoholic beverages but the few uncleaned rings of liquid on the table and the floor imply that some of those bottles were trashed so as not to alarm you and Karkat. Honestly, you would think they'd realize you aren't young and oblivious anymore. You notice these small details. It's how you know when Cronus is lying to you; he'll quirk up an eyebrow as if he's already disbelieving you accepting his response. Quite the opposite.

You approach them by the couch, where your father is laying down, breathing just slightly heavier than usual. You gently touch his shoulder and he jolts a little from the touch, a reaction that he's always had when he's disturbed from a peaceful calm. Both you and Sae-Yon hush him softly, lay him back down. He fixes up the cloths back over your father's head and stomach. "I just wanted to make sure you were alright. You don't often binge like this." The last time you could ever recall him even drinking was when you were much younger, when you'd only been living with him for three years at most. He was close to completely mastering in college and you remember how stressed he was because he didn't want to botch it up and he was trying to make time for you and Karkat especially. He apologized so often to you both for not spending as much time with you as he wanted to. Then one night you found him drinking while doing work and he started to apologize again. He told you that he would stop after that night. You never saw him do it again.

You're pretty sure that night, that entire ending to his college time, was what made you love him as your father.

Sae-Yon asks if you'll fill up the glass of water he'd gotten earlier; you gladly do so. The slow pace of walking is helping to ease your mind. You know that if you weren't doing this, or anything, then you'd be sitting up in your room spamming Cronus with messages about how you are so incredibly upset with his father at the moment. You didn't know much about your father's life before you came into it, seven and somewhat frightened by him, but you knew he had always told you that he lived on his own because he had no one else. He didn't look for love in his spare time because he no longer wanted it. "I have you two now to love. Unless you're bothered by not having two parents -- " At which point you would both tell him you didn't mind at all. Even Karkat, four years younger than you, was perfectly fine with just having one parent. Then again, he also had you taking care of him when you needed to. 

All of the pain that your father felt whenever you asked why he chose to be alone, all of the years that he must have spent in this place by himself, torturing himself with thoughts of what he could've done wrong, all of it was because of one person who couldn't just come right out and say a few words. It was maddening in your eyes. 

Your father thanks you for the drink and quietly apologizes for going back on his word. You think nothing of it. He went all these years, through so many stressful work days and dealing with growing boys, and never once picked up a glass. You don't mind so much that he did after going through four years of memories and emotions in the span of one night. 

You look to Sae-Yon. "How long are you staying for?" You knew he had kids of his own back home that would need tending to. There was no telling what type of trouble Mituna could get into if Sollux wasn't watching him carefully. You knew Mituna could take care of himself; you saw him do it often at school. He did have a severe mental problem though and even he admitted he would rather be watched than left alone to his devices. You found it quite mature of him, which was hard for you to say considering your relationship with him. It wasn't the best one you'd ever had. 

The Captor father shrugs, looking to your father, watching his chest rise and fall in an even pace now. You wonder where his shirt went; you don't see it anywhere and he's still in his pants from dinner so he couldn't have gone upstairs to take it off. He would've finished changing if that were the case. "I wath thinking of thtaying for a while but I probably thould go home thoon." You try not to stare but you find your eyes drifting to his mouth and the missing teeth he has that's causing the lisp that seems to run in the Captor family. Mituna's is due to his condition and sometimes you think Sollux does his on purpose. You've never found anything wrong with the youngest Captor. "You're awake tho I know he'th gonna be taken care of if I go now. Juth make thure he keepth hydrated and geth food at leath onth today." You nod, already having known most of this from common sense but you don't say anything about it. He won't feel satisfied if he hasn't mentioned everything he feels he needs to, whether you know it or not. "Better thafe than thorry," he says at the end. 

He moves the washcloth on your dad's forehead and gives a friendly kiss to the damp skin. You find yourself wondering if they also had something of an intimate relationship over the years, and tey were the ones who never worked out like Karkat thought had happened with Orpheus last night. You make a face. You don't think you'll ever be able to say his first name. It sounds so strange even in your head.

The day crawls by slowly. You fix yourself breakfast as your father sleeps on the couch. You clean up the living room before Karkat wakes, and make him lunch after he does. Your father wakes up again an hour before dinner, wrapped up in a comforter you'd given him earlier when he started shivering. His nose is red and he has lightly colored bags beneath his eyes, but he says his head isn't pounding anymore and his appetite is back. You and Karkat collaborate to make dinner and your father does down most of it over the course of an hour. The finer details of the day seem to blur to you which frightens you. You are always careful to pay attention to everything. The emotions must be getting to you. Nothing a little sleep can't cure.

You make sure both your father and Karkat make it to bed well enough before settling down yourself. You take a risk and call Cronus, feeling bad for not messaging him much the whole day; he answers after a few rings with a tired hello. You do feel bad for possibly waking him but hearing his voice just calms you down so immensely. You love it. You love him. You curl up beneath your blankets, phone tucked between your ear and you give a small little, "hey" in return to him. He doesn't ask if everything is going okay, he doesn't tell you about how his father is acting strange after the encounter last night since he was messaging you about it all day already. He says, "I love you, Kan. Tomorrov-ow's gonna be real good alright? Things'll go great 'cuz I'll pick you up and v-we can just hang out for a v-while, just you and me, and nothing's gonna be v-wrong for the entire day. Tv-Twenty four hours of happiness for the both a us and our bros w-v-will be fine v-with our dads and it'll just be great." He continues on for a few more minutes and you just smile and listen to him until the words get a little more intimate. You can feel that shift in his tone, hear that smirk in his voice and that's when you speak up, returning the sweet words he's whispering to you know with words of your own.

You both fall asleep still in the call, satisfied and happy to be with each other. Cronus is right. The day will be good and your father will be perfectly fine on his own for a few hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is also titled: in which Zack nearly cried twice writing two of these scenes


	5. Monday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize if this seems stunted at all  
> I had a hard time writing this chapter for some reason so I kept stopping
> 
> This chapter is also titled: Zack loves Colors and always will
> 
> Edit: 2/4/15 I moved orpheus' font over so now it looks like texting more   
> I feel very proud ^u^

Be Sainath:

You try not to think about him over the next few days, and for the most part you do succeed. Orpheus is put out of your head as you quietly work during Karkat's school hours and even when you do a few commissions from your side hobby during your free time. You receive comments about how you seem to be gloomier lately, and how the few bits of artwork you'd taken to doing over the years were using darker colors, more blues and blacks and purples, but you brushed those comments off. You reassured your coworkers that you were just going through a small bump in the road, and you focused more on the comments of how despite the new color scheme, your work still looked rather beautiful. 

You can't seem to stop yourself a few days after that binge though. You find yourself biting at your nails to calm your nerves, a habit that never died away from when you were a child. You keep thinking about how maybe you should call him up, see if he wants to have dinner over here again, but that seems so depraved and desperate and you are neither of those things. You just want to hang out with somebody who had once played an important role in your life. That's all. You don't want anything more from this than a renewed friendship. You don't need anything more than that. You lived on your own and with your boys for this long. Your opinion shouldn't change just because somebody you used to know came back into your life. 

"Oh, hell," you mutter, resting your head in your hands, "I'm over thinking this too much. All I need to do is ask Kankri for his number and then just..." Just what? Anything you ask is going to sound like a date in your eyes. Even if you just asked him out for drinks, it's going to feel like an awkward first date because despite all your whining, you do still have feelings for Orpheus. You really can't deny that. But you will if it means just being able to have him back in your life. You missed being able to call him up at two in the morning and just talking until you passed out again. You missed being able to have somebody to go to the movies with or to push around jokingly, not that Sae-Yon didn't do that job well enough. It just hadn't been the same. Sae-Yon was your best friend and Orpheus was the one who you'd taken the next step with. He went beyond friendship. He filled a bit of you that Sae-Yon couldn't even if he tried.

You let your head fall to the table you were sitting at. "The more I think about this, the more it sounds like a bad porno," you told the oak beneath your face. "What I need to do is yell at him for putting me through this all this trouble. Making me drink for the first time since God knows when, getting my hopes up thinking maybe he'd try to stay in my life this time around. Making me wonder what happened to him, making wonder why he..." You trail off and go back into thinking about all this, shifting so that your chin rests in the crook of your crossed arms. If nothing else, you want to know why he stopped speaking to you when you went off to college. Four years of dating, years of memories and friendship and knowing that you would both be a little quieter so you could focus on your aducation; all of it lost in just a few ignored messages. You really just wanted to know why he didn't let you into the loop, why he didn't say anything to you. Why he let you think he was gone for good.

Some time in the midst of your thoughts, your son must have read your mind because he pushes a tiny slip of paper into your field of vision. He leaves with no words and one of your sodas, the little brat, but you forgive him because there's a phone number written on the folded parchment in front of you. You stare at it and sigh shakily. You suppose you should get this over with while you have the nerves to. And you don't have to call him. While it may take longer on both ends, texting is just so convenient when it comes to a borederline nervous breakdown topic. 

You type the number into your phone and, with a horribly snorted laugh, you type in a very old codename from high school. "Mr Scourge of the sea, Orphaner Dualscar, at your service," you giggle out. You wonder if he even remembers that. Everyone in homeroom had one of those silly little names, even you after a while. For some reason, no name had fit you until Constance had torn off the insignia to one of your uniform shirts in what you believe was a fit of jealousy since you were such close friends with Sae-Yon. You still aren't entirely clear on what their relationship had been but you often compare it to the "nerd following after the cheerleader because he's a little mentally blind" scenario. You like to think you woke him out of his fantasy.

You take a long, deep breath, hold it for a few seconds, and let it out in an even deeper exhale. Time to try and get something done today.

Be Orpheus:

You have to say you're more than surprised when your phone goes off on your way out of work. The tone isn't long enough to be a call tone cut short; it's a legitimate text tone. Even Cronus doesn't text you anymore. He's found it much faster to try and call you, much thanks to your coercion. You remember him saying that he was going to go on another date with Kankri today anyhow, after a job interview with somebody downtown. You're hoping he gets that job too. Anything at this point is better than nothing. 

You settle down in your car, not turning it on yet as you check the message. You aren't completely up to date with technology usage but you aren't so behind that you can't figure out how your phone works. You're much faster with this phone anyhow; it's bigger and has the little pull-out keyboard that reminds you of the computer keyboard. Much easier to work with than the phone you had when your boys first convinced you to get one.

Today at 6:06 p.m.

Hello, Dualscar.

Wow. Wow, that is like a blast of cool air on a hot day. When was the last time you were called by your high school name? You don't even remember. You check the name and number at the top of the screen but it's unknown to your phone. That rules out a few people from your class, including Miss Condescension herself. You have her number in your phone already. You have to have it in your phone since she is your boss, and she changes numbers less times than you do. 

You have a feeling though that this isn't a random person from your homeroom class. You have a feeling that this is somebody you saw very recently and had, quite frankly, been avoiding. What are you supposed to do in this situation? They make guidebooks on being a single dad. They make guidebooks on how to be successful in a desk job run by a Queen Bitch. They don't make guides on how to approach your boyfriend from twenty-five years in the past who you may or may not still have feelings for. Or how to figure out if you still have feelings for them so you know whether to be jumping around the subject or not. Why is your life suddenly becoming so much more difficult?

Good evening signless

You push your phone out of sight before you can even think about what you just wrote or who you just sent it to and start your car. You keep your breathing steady and your mind blank as you drive home, later than usual now you think about it. You're wondering if Cronus told you when to expect him home, and what time it would be appropriate to tell him to get his ass home anyway if he isn't before then. Eridan will be home by the time you are, even if he had stayed after school for some tutoring. You knew he was starting to struggle in one of his classes, though which it was escaped you, so the after school precaution was there most days. You were positive it ended at 4:30 though, almost a good two hours ago.

You blame your phone going off for almost running a red light. This should not be making you so damned jumpy. It's just Sainath. He is your son's boyfriend's father, nothing more. You knew him in high school, you dated him in high school, he fell out of contact with you and you moved on. There is nothing more to it. You are a grown man. You can handle a simple conversation with a simple man. 

You still wait until you're parked in your driveway to grab your phone again. Safety first, kids. 

Oh, God, you do remember that.  


Was i not supposed to?

You gather your things and enter your home, your phone actually in your hand and not your pocket for once. You hear Eridan's music from upstairs, just loud enough to hear the background noise. Nothing like that time last Wednesday. Cronus and Kankri are sitting in what would normally be a single person chair, but Cronus is stradling Kankri's lap to make it a two person one. You try not to stare at them after noticing because tey are pretty deep into their little make out session. At least you don't have to worry about Cronus being safe now. You clear your throat to get their attention and to get a kick out of watching your son flush brightly when he looks back at you. Your phone goes off. "Don't stay out too late unless your father is fine with you staying over, Kankri. I'll make dinner soon. I just need some time to settle down. Continue on." You toe off your shoes, take off your jacket and begin to leave them. You can still feel Cronus' eyes on you, though the shuffling sounds imply that Kankri is already ready to follow your orders. He's a fiesty one when he's alone.

You grin and wait a few moments before popping back into the room. "Remember to use a cond -- " Your son half screeches at you to try to get you to stop talking; Kankri groans in annoyance at the implications you're giving. 

"Honestly, Mr Ampora, you really should trust me more. I come well prepared in case Cronus does get a little friskier than usual." While you know that Kankri would never speak like that in public, or even to you the first times he came over, you know he does it for your son's reactions. He abhors when you or him or anyone gangs up on him like that but it's all in good fun. 

You retreat to your room after the little bit of banter. You're actually quite surprised that Kankri even spoke to you, even in a jesting way. Perhaps he's finally cooled down as well from all the difficulties with his father. Good, because you really don't think any of this would work out if all the parties involved weren't on good terms.

No, it's just that I didn't expect you to. I mean, Sae-Yon doesn't remember it very well, and I wouldn't think Salvadore or Haylli to remember it either.  
I think Disiya does.

You find yourself grinning as you watch each message come in about familiar names and faces, both welcome to your memories, like Disiya the Disciple or even Sae-Yon your Psiioniic though you did have rough times with him, and unwelcome to your thoughts, like your boss and her right hand man back in high school. You're pretty sure they're married now, odd as it sounds to your ears. 

You still talk more when you're nervous i see  


I'll have you know that I do not. I talk a normal amount for a man my age, and I spoke a normal amount for a teenager too. I simply participated in a lot of assemblies and speeches and those require long periods of speaking.  


Two hours. you spoke for two hours in one of those assemblies and you put one of the teachers to sleep  
You only need to speak for thirty minutes at a time during those things but you get so nervous that you just keep going

You lay down on your bed, lazily just in your underclothes by now, too distracted by the conversation to finish getting into your casual clothes. You are more than likely going to regret this decision later but right now, you're actually enjoying being able to relax in bed and just talk to somebody without it being about the work you just did for the passed several hours. It's something you hadn't realized you missed until recently. 

You didn't really notice how much time had passed until Eridan came into your room to tell you that you needed topay for the dinner that Cronus ordered because he had no idea where you'd put your money, and of course the little brat of a son didn't have any on him at the moment. He claimed to have given it back to you so that he could start fresh when he got his new job, which you found admirable but hard to believe all components considered. You tried to dress quickly, so you could get downstairs and pretend this didn't happen whatsoever. You don't even know what came over you, losing track of time like that. A full hour had gone by from what you said dinner would be started out. You felt terrible about this.

Kankri had gone home by now according to your son, and Sainath confirmed that he'd gotten home safely when you asked. Dinner was somewhat disjointed, with Cronus trying to cover up his neck a little too frequently to be considered sneaky and you dying to talk to Sai more. You held off nicely though despite feeling like a child anticipating in the time before his first date starts. You felt so light and so absolutely happy having somebody to talk to again. Your boys were great for some talk but you were supposed to be there for them and their days and troubles, not the other way around. Having somebody your age that you felt could be there the way you were for Eridan and Cronus brought forth a lot of emotions that you hadn't felt in years. It's a rush.

You share a look with Cronus after Eridan departs to his room. He looks confused for the most part, like he isn't sure what's going on anymore. You don't blame him. You're confused yourself what with all these changes going on in your own thought process and with the surprise of having somebody back in your life who you honestly thought you'd never see again. That whole situation confuses you even more; Sainath was the one who stopped talking to you after you left the town for college. So why had he looked so hurt at dinner? You try not to think about it as you return to your own room, leaving Cronus alone in the kitchen now.

You got extremely quiet all of a sudden. Is everything all right?  


We were having a late dinner thats all  
But there is something bothering me now that im thinking about it

You see the little Seen: 7:48 p.m. at the bottom of your message so you assume he's just waiting for you to continue when you don't hear from him after a few minutes. You gulp. This isn't exactly something you want to discuss over the phone. You want to be able to see him and make sure you know he isn't lying about anything he tells to you.

Do you want to go out to dinner sometime this week?  
Or to a bar or just staying at one of our places i dont know  
Just somewhere to be relatively alone and able to talk about all thats happened

You wait in tense anticipation for Sai's reply, hoping he understands what you mean and doesn't blow you off because of it. You figure the whole thing is sensitive to him because he didn't message you but you didn't exactly try messaging him either. Mirjam had convinced you not to by the time you'd thought about it. Looking back at it now, listening to Serket probably wasn't your best move, but you were young and not entirely emotionally stable. What else were you supposed to do?

I'd like that.  
I don't work on Thursday. Wednesday we can go out and go to one of your bars if you'd like. I think we can both agree a drink or two might do us good for this.

You sigh. Thank God this part rolled over smoothly.

Alright ill pick you up once i get off work  
Get some sleep tonight though  


I will.  
And Orpheus?  


Yeah?  


Please don't stop talking to me again. Message me sometime. I don't mean to sound stupidly clingy or cliche or whatever but I'm tired of going days withouttalking and then these huge spouts. I haven't lived like that in all my life and I don't want to live like that now, especially with you.

You're going to regret this.

Sai

You're going to regret this so much.

Get some rest. you sound tired  
Ill pick you up on wednesday and we can talk about everything then  
Good night

You relocate your phone charger to the bathroom and keep it in there for the night without waiting for a response from Sainath. And you know you're going to regret doing this to him, sending all these stupid messages and mixed signals, but right now you can't handle all the overwhelming bits and pieces that are coming with contacting Sai again. You don't want to try and juggle it right now, or ever really. You half want to just be friends with him again and forget that all the stuff in the past happened at all. You want to ignore the past twenty five years of silence that you both endured and for what? Because you were both too goddamn stubborn to make the first move again? 

You childishly bury your face in your pillow. This is too much. This is far too much to try and handle. It's dangerous and overwhelming and it's painful. 

And it is so worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like the idea of kankri being a little looser at the ampora house or just kinda away from his father in general  
> Not a lot but just enough to be like  
> Kankri boy whatchu doing


	6. Tuesday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm writing this like a madman  
> If I keep going like this, It's very possible that this'll be finished before the end of February  
> But don't hold me to that
> 
> Again sorry for it being kinda stunted in progression

Be Sainath:

You think Kankri is getting suspicious about what you're doing in your spare time and how this whole ordeal with Orpheus is effecting you because when you get off the phone with Sae-Yon, who will be coming over again tonight and likely bringing a few drinks again, he's looking at you with those same large eyes you used to give your mother on the nights when she stayed in the basement with her head in her hands and tears on her cheeks. It's the same look you would give to Orpheus when he yelled at you out of pure unreasonable frustration, though you can count the times he did that on one hand. He was always so kind to you, always so loving, like a partner should be.

So why was he doing this now? Why was he ignoring you again when he knew your number, knew where you lived, practically knew your whole schedule? Why was he doing this to you again when you knew he still felt that little spark of happiness you'd felt by being around him again. Maybe the teenage love had gone but the friendship was still there, right?

"Right?" You look to Sae for comfort, about an hour after you called him over, and he looks at you like you've had enough to drink for the night. Maybe you have. It's not nearly as much as Friday evening you're pretty sure, but you've definitely had a few drinks by now. "Am I right though? Am I crazy for thinking like this?"

He's still giving you that look. Slowly, he takes the mostly empty bottle from your hand. You let him. "What are you even talking about? You've been thilent for motht of the hour that I've been here and then you thtart up with thith. Thtart over, you crazy thon of a bitch." You know he means that in the most endearing of ways but wow, could he be any meaner right now? You are in the midst of a drunk emotional crisis and he decides to call you names. Rude. You try to start over from the beginning of your internal monologuing though and manage to get fairly far before you start getting a little choked up. You whine a bit as you reach for the bottle in Sae's hands. You don't care that it's empty; you need something to hold on to or you're going to die. He hands it back to you only when you've draped yourself over his lap in an attempt to reach it from his outstretched arm and give your bottom a little wiggle.

You look to him expectantly once you have the bottle again. You think your fingers are shaking a little. "Thai. You know what I would do if I were you." You actually don't know despite what he thinks, but you do have an idea about what you're going to do. Right now. Intoxication or no intoxication. Protest from Sae-Yon or no. 

"Sae-Yon, I need you to give me a ride somewhere."

You're going to visit Orpheus.

Be Orpheus:

You come home at the usual time today and the moment you walk in the door, you hear a shout of pain. You instinctively rush to where you heard it, somewhere near the kitchen, but surprisingly you do not see either of your sons in there bleeding or on the ground in any type of pain. You didn't see either of your boys at all. You saw Sainath, sucking on his finger and face looking flushed like he'd been running the mile. Something that got his blood pumping. "Sai?"

He spins towards you with his finger still in his mouth and he _staggers_ as he steadies into the position. He removes his finger and points it accusingly at you. "You. Are such a bastard. And I hate you." He continues on about you not messaging him and about how you're being extremely immature and a bunch of other things that you don't even think he realizes he's saying. You've stopped listening in favor of setting your things down by the kitchen table. He just stays where he is, ranting about God knows what anymore. 

You approach him after he seems to calm down a little and sigh when you find that he's crying. Not heavily; just a few tears dripping down his cheeks like he'd been holding all that in for so long that it likely felt like bliss to let it all out. You can smell the alcohol on his breath, which surprises you almost as much as him even being in your house. "I thought you had a no drinking rule, Sai." He hiccups in response. You sigh again, gently grabbing his hands and leading him out of the kitchen. You both end up on the couch in the living room. Sainath leans on you a little, slumped in exhaustion.

"How did you even get in here?" 

He murmurs something into your arm. You look up at the ceiling. You feel like you're dealing with Cronus whenever he threw a huge fit as a child, particularly when Eridan hadn't even gotten his name yet. He hadn't taken the news of getting a little brother well at all when everything was first starting out and refused to talk, refused to do much of anything unless he had to. And then when he'd finally accepted it and decided enough was enough apparently, he'd slumped against you like this and cried and apologized and spoke so softly you could hardly remember ever being mad at him for being so incorrigible before. You're starting to get that feeling now as Sainath starts trying to explain how your boys let him in not ten minutes before you got home and then left for the store so that they wouldn't have to see whatever you'd do to him or vice versa. They'd called you saying they were going to the store too.

Then he apologizes for blowing up at you and even for drinking, which you still didn't know he did. You feel a lump in your throat form as your thoughts spiralled a little; you really hope that's not completely your fault. You hesitantly put an arm around him, pulling him closer to you. It's an intimate position but you know it's going to calm him down a lot more than not doing anything and letting him go on and on for hours, which he would do if you let him. He quiets down as you do so, face resting against your chest, right where your jacket stops and exposes your shirt. You can feel him trembling a little and it occurs to you that maybe you should call Sae-Yon or somebody else who's likely in his phonebook so that they can pick him up and calm him down. Then it occurs to you that maybe you should just keep him here, tucked in your embrace because that's what he wants. He wants you to be there with him and not so far away, so unreachable from where he is. He missed you, honestly and truly, and he can't stand the distance now that he has you back. It scares you, this idea of having somebody to keep up with after you've had years of social isolation. Your wife left and you receded into a shell that contained only your boys. How on Earth were you going to open up enough for Sai? 

"Hey," your voice is a lot softer than what you thought it would be, low and quiet, "Let me up for a minute. I don't want to stay in my work clothes." It takes a few moments but Sainath does lift up, and you leave him on the couch in favor of going to your room. You do change, but slowly, so that you can have a few minutes to think and collect your thoughts. This is suddenly an extremely delicate situation and you will be damned before you go and fuck up again. You're going to have to just power through all the screwed up signals and mixed feelings like a man.

You come back to Sai just a few minutes later and find that he's made drinks for the two of you. He's holding a small mug of tea, steam lines coming off of it in thick waves, though you think your vision is biased from the little dissolving sugar granules floating on the drink's surface. Your drink is on a coaster on the side table by the couch, where the lamp is, and when you touch the edge of the cup you realize why he had shouted earlier. That cup held heat like a minor sun, which scared you most days. You settle back down on the couch with him, and you hardly think about it before pulling Sainath back under your arm once you've set his cup down. You don't think he was really expecting it though because he flails for a moment before tumbling halfway into your lap. You look down at him; he looks up at you. You have a brief moment of panic where you think about your boys and what they'll think, and you think about how you can't be doing this with Sainath of all people, all this roughhousing and acting like there's not going to be consequences for all this. But you catch sight of his big worried eyes and you realize that you're as transparent as the air around you. 

"I'm sorry," you finally say.

He presses a finger to your lips, probably realizing that you want to say more and just babble out who knows what at that point. You can't be blamed. You've treated him poorly the past few days for somebody who used to be so close and you need to convey that while you're still just calm and not thinking all that much. 

You feel his fingers trail away from your lips, up your jaw and cheek, into your hair. You're too stunned to say anything about it, and the feeling of his fingertips pressing and massaging your scalp is heavenly right now. You don't really realize that you're relaxing until you feel the back of the couch enveloping you, and Sai is sitting up in your lap so that he can keep his hands on your head. Your eyes fall shut after a few moments because _God_ , if it doesn't feel amazing. 

And then you feel something press against your lips and you open your eyes to find Sainath's closed ones not an inch away from your face. You feel the panic rise in you again and you know he feels it too when you feel his hands tighten ever so slightly and see his eyes squeeze shut just a little more. He doesn't want it to end, not yet. 

You don't think that you do either.

Be Sainath:

The moment you feel Orpheus tense up, you try to keep him there with you. Maybe you're still a little too intoxicated to be considering any of this, and maybe 25 years of suppressed emotion has turned your want to be with Orpheus into a little bit of an obsession, but you don't want to lose him again. He had meant so much to you back then and he still did now. After all the years, after everything he'd done and you'd done, you still felt that you could say you loved him to some degree. Maybe you were rushing the idea, maybe you were just acting like this because the past few days had been so emotional between Kankri getting accepted into a college and suddenly Orpheus coming back into your life, but you didn't want to stop now that you'd already gone too far. 

Then you feel Orpheus kissing you back, and his arms come around behind you to help you get situated on his lap more, his hands resting on your hips when he's finished, and you start wondering if maybe you aren't rushing back into this. Maybe you're just picking up where you left off. 

You feel like you're moving in a blur after that. It's a rush of adrenaline and it's a rush of pressing lips and breathing each other in. You think you became something of a hair tugger over the years because you do keep doing pulling on the dirty blond locks of his hair and he eventually takes your hands away from his head and places them on his shoulders instead. You sort of murmur an apology into his lips, and your eyes go wide when he almost jokingly hits your bottom. You pull back to stare at him and he looks so unamused but the heavy flush on his face is making it lose it's effect. You giggle a little. 

"Hush. Just... quit apologizing already, Sai."

"Only if you relax a little, Dual."

"Don't call me that when I'm trying to indulge in you."

He pulls you back into another kiss and you're pretty sure that he's getting a little drunk off the high that you know he's feeling. You feel it too. You want to feel it more, just a little more, and you know you would not be doing half these things if you were fully sober. You would not be trying to undo the buttons on Orpheus' shirt. "Who even wears -- " You cut yourself off from criticizing his shirt choice when he starts kissing down your jaw, gulping when he reaches your neck. 

"Orpheus?" This is something of a surprise. You don't remember him ever being the one to initiate much, not because he didn't want it, but because you either beat him to it or because he over thought every little move because he was so deathly afraid of not being able to live up to the standards you had, few as they were. So with him slowly taking over the lead that you started, pushing his hands under your shirt, up your back, and mouthing at your neck -- it's just a nice surprise that makes you feel so incredibly happy. 

You hum a little as he starts sucking on your skin, just light enough for you to feel it. Your hands, seemingly working on autopilot because you do not remember getting his shirt completely unbuttoned, run along his chest as your eyes slip shut, and there is an extremely awkward moment when you both have to pause because he bit your neck but the surprise caused you to tense and tug and the bit of hair that he had on his chest. You feel terrible, and go to apologize but he bites you again, a little harder, so you just shut your mouth instead.

It happens again a few moments later when he nips at your collar bone. He isn't mad but you can see in his eyes that he's not going to let it happen again. You grab onto him tightly as he quite suddenly lifts you up and then lays across the couch, your head resting just beneath the arm. He pushes your own arms up and keeps them up with his own hands wrapped around your wrists. You stare at him. "No wonder my boy is getting so feisty lately. If Cronus is anything like you -- " You're cut off again as Orpheus pushes up your shirt and resumes his sucking and biting fest beneath where it now rests. You can't breathe anymore; you can't think. So you just relax and close your eyes and let him do what he apparently feels he needs to. Sometimes you wish you could just get into that head of his. 

You reopen your eyes only when you think you hear him starting to talk -- and find that you're staring right at Cronus in the front door. Eridan is behind him, not quite able to see past his brother you think, and both of them are carrying a bag of groceries. You had completely forgotten that they'd gone to the store. You'd forgotten all about them in your lapsing haze of want. 

You absolutely panic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took such an unexpected turn but I am not complaining and I don't think you guys will either
> 
> Today's chapter is brought to you by the letter P   
> P for Panic


	7. Cronus' Bonus Chapter of No

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been finished since the last update luuuul  
> I just wanted to keep you all waiting~

Be Cronus:

"Hey, Pa, v-we're ho-ohh my God, v-what?" 

What hell have you stumbled upon? One where Mr Vantas is just as embarrassed as you are, if the way he's looking at you when his eyes open is any indication. Like directly at you, which you're pretty sure is an accident, but it's enough for you to notice, and it's enough to put ten times more embarrassment into the whole situation. Mr Vantas scrambles under your dad, and he gets the message because he sits up and you can just picture the confusion on his face as Kanny's dad tries to pull his shirt down.

And then he looks back at where you're standing, and you aren't sure if you'd rather see anger in there for interrupting them or whatever lust he might have been feeling because he looked like he was getting pretty into it on the couch there. 

Oh, God. The couch. You're never sitting on it again.

"C'mon, Cro, w-will you let me in the house? It's freezin' out here. W-What's takin' so long?" You envy your little brother right now. He doesn't have to witness seeing his best friend's dad getting resituated, although Mr Vantas doesn't have a terrible body to look. It's just the concept that _he's your boyfriend's dad and no kid should ever see a parent they know partially or fully naked_. Nor should they have to see their own parent like that. Not over the age of five. Any time under that, they won't remember it for one thing, and for another, that's generally only during bath time. And that was only once. With your mom. Not your dad. You have never seen your dad undressed and you never wanted to, and now the image of him with his goddamn sleep shirt unbuttoned is going to be ingrained into your memory banks for the rest of your life. Although, if you had to say something nice about the situation, you dad doesn't exactly have a bad bod to look at either.

You think that once you get these bags taken care of, you're going to wash out your mouth because you've got a really bad taste there now. You'll rinse it twice. Maybe three times if your dad doesn't try to give you two a talk of some awkward kind. You suppress a gag at the thought of that. God forbid he try to give you a talk. He's terrible at those.

You don't let Eridan pass by you until your dad and Mr Vantas are on opposite ends of the couch and your dad is doing up his last button. Your dad's hair is such a complete sexed up mess, and you _know_ Eridan notices when he looks at them, and you _know_ he notices how flushed Mr Vantas is, and how he's rubbing at his neck like it might itch but he doesn't want to scratch at it. That's about when you see at least one really dark patch on his skin that you don't think you would have noticed if you hadn't been looking. You think you can feel your eyes bugging out a little. 

"Yeah, Eridan, can you put the groceries av-away. I gotta do something." You leave without another word and try not to slam the bathroom door shut but you kind of want your dad to know that's where you went and that you're not entirely pleased with finding him trying to get it on with Kankri's dad. That's just weird as all hell. Any normal kid would be at least a little weirded out by all this right? You should probably talk to Kankri. He's going to find out later anyway; there's no way that he'll miss that mark. He knows his dad left and right, up and down. 

"I'm nev-wer hav-wing kids," you grumble as you shove your toothbrush into your mouth. "I'm nev-wer getting kids and new-ver gonna hav-we to risk v-watching them do that an' nev-wer, new-ver, nev-w-ver," you trail off with other things you're never going to have to go through by not having kids ever in your whole life. 

"Nev-wer, nev-wer, nope."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nevwer newver nope nope


	8. Still Tuesday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do not care that I uploaded a chapter earlier too  
> I wanted to add another one  
> #TW  
> i don't remember what I'm tagging but I'm tagging just in case bc I got a lil triggered

Be Sainath:

Your head is going a mile a minute. You are most definitely sober by now, and you kind of want to call your mother and ask if you can stay the night at her house. You want nothing more right now than to drive the hour to where she lives and lay your head on her lap and watch whatever sitcom show is on at this time of night. You never did call her like you told yourself you would anyway. Maybe your boys would like to visit their grandmother anyhow. 

You just got caught red handed. By Orpheus' kids. You never even got caught by your mother when you were dating him! Not in the act anyhow. She may or may not have walked into the house when you were both trying to clean up but you were at least both fully clothed, for goodness' sake. You feel your face getting warmer and warmer the more you think about it. Somebody is going to need to call the fire department at the rate your temperature is rising. Soon smoke will be coming out your ears, you know it. 

You place your head in your hands, and not long after feel a hesitant, gentle hand place on your back. You resist the urge to flinch or shrug it off. You just sigh, try not to apologize yet again.

You knew this was dangerous. You knew this was going to be tedious. You knew you were going to be walking right across the teeter totter with this one and you feel like you've just fallen off. This whole night was a disaster, even if you did get a little something out of it, but you feel awful about even initiating it now. You let every suppressed emotion and excited energy out all at once and it overwhelmed you and --

"Sai!" 

Your head snaps up when you hear your name, and you hear a very nice _thunk!_ sound before pain explodes into the back of your head. You immediately grasp at the back of your head, bending over as you feebly try to stop the throbbing. "Holy Mother of God, please tell me I didn't just kill you. Speak if you're not dead. Grunt if you're heavily bleeding because wow, that hurt." You're speaking so fast you can hardly even hear your words. You can't comprehend them. 

"I'm not bleeding or dead," Orpheus grumbles out and you wince because you can hear the oncoming headache in his voice. You're definitely going to your mother's house tonight, kids or no kids. You need to just end this day on something of a good note and there's no better way to do that than some time with her. "I'll be sore in the morning at the most. You only hit my chin. What about you? That's a two way pain factor."

"I'm fine," you say, even though you still feel the throbbing under your fingertips from that impact. "I..." You sit up slowly and your vision swims a little. You'll be sleeping good tonight, if nothing else. Maybe if you're injured enough, you'll really have a reason to visit your mother. She's a retired nurse and has been more than happy over the years to be a family nurse for you and your boys. You don't think she would mind making sure you didn't just permanently damage your head. 

"I need to go," you finally manage to get out, "I need to go and you need to explain a few things to your kids and..." You stand up, ignoring the way your vision blurs again since it fixes itself a few moments later. "I really shouldn't have come anyway. I should have just waited until tomorrow and we could have talked and this was just such a big mistake and I'm so sorry that this is how things turned out, Orpheus -- " You turn back to him during your apology, having been trying to walk away as you spoke, and you see him standing too, staring at you with these troubled eyes. Of all the words in your vocabulary, you can't describe his eyes as anything but troubled. He looks so confused and unsure and you see that poor teenaged boy again, trying to figure out where to go after all is said and done. 

You feel this pull, that familiar want to go back to him, but that's what got you in this mess in the first place so you try to ignore it, try to focus on something else. You look at his eyes and his scars, and your hand twitches in a want to touch them. They're much more healed than in high school but still so prominent there on his face. You hardly remember what he looked like without them. You stare at him, all of him, and he just stares back, not speaking to you.

"I need to go," you whisper. 

"You don't," he finally says back, "but you're going to anyway, and I won't stop you. I didn't stop you from leaving then, and I'm not going to now." 

Your vision blurs up a little again but it isn't from the pain in your head this time. 

You leave, not entirely sure of how long you stayed there in front of him with tear jerking eyes and a heavy hollow in your heart. You leave, and you feel terrible. You leave, and you call Kankri to ask him if he wants to go visit your mother. Of course, he's ecstatic and you hear him tell Karkat to pack a small bag of essentials since he probably figures you'll all be staying the night. It is a school night after all. You don't think you'll make Karkat go though. Call the school and say there was a family crisis and you just didn't want your son having to deal with the weight on his mind. He'll be happy to have an extra day on the report you know he's putting off, if nothing else.

Kankri suddenly speaks very softly to you though, asking if you're alright. You realize now that you'd started crying. Not badly; you just have those tears dripping down your face again and you're making these soft noises like a puppy that's been kicked down. You feel terrible. 

"I'm fine, son," although your voice cracks a little when you try to talk, "I just didn't have things go the way I wanted and I have a lot to think about now. That's all."

He's quiet for a few moments. "If you say so, father. You just don't ask me to use the car too often, that's all. And you do sound rather upset." You know he's not trying to push the subject too much, but he is trying to get something more out of you than what you're giving him. You suppose it's inevitable; he is your son, after all. You just don't want to delve into it with him right now. Not in the detail that you'd need to tell your mother. 

"Me and Orpheus just had a bit of a blow-out is all. I think we're both just very confused about a lot of what's going on and we're both going about finding answers the wrong way." As you say it, you realize that it's fairly accurate. He's trying to find out answers and dealing with the whole meeting you again by being in isolation, and you're trying to by being overly social and maybe even a little forceful. 

If you could feel any worse right now, you don't think you'd be sitting up. You would just lay down on the curb in front of your ex-boyfriend's house and just openly sob into the night.

"Very well. Please, don't leave me in the dark for longer, Dad. I don't exactly enjoy seeing you so..." He fumbles for a word while you recover from him saying Dad. He never calls you Dad. You don't even think it's in his personal dictionary, he uses it so seldomly. "I don't know. You're just worrying me. Even Karkat is starting to wonder about what's going on. What happened that pushed you to all this?"

You hang up on him. You don't want to try and deal with all that right now. You'll tell him, you swear you will, but for now you just need time to get everything together.

You call your mother instead. She sounds like she's putting dishes away, which is odd considering the time of night, but who are you to judge? Your life decisions aren't exactly the best out there lately either.

"Mom?"

"Sainath? What's wrong?"

You don't say anything at first. You wonder if she's doing that thing where she grips the phone with two hands yet. It's adorable really, even though it usually means bad news. Her other hand just rests at the bottom, lightly wrapped around the phone and it's just the daintiest of motions. You hated seeing it as a child but it gives you such a strange comfort right now. 

"How mad would you be if I came over with the boys tonight?" 

"Tonight? Oh, that's fine, dear, but that doesn't answer my question. What's wrong? Are the boys sick? Nobody's... passed on, have they?" You can feel another couple of tears go down your cheeks. You missed your mother's voice so much. "Sainath, please, tell me something so I know what I need to prepare for. Are you hurt? Are you sick? Oh, please tell me you didn't catch the flu that's been going around. It's supposed to be horrid this year. Or something worse. I don't care what they say about it being contained, that Ebola bug will strike at any moment at this rate and you know it." You smile a little, still just standing on the Amporas' property, and cry as you listen to her go on and on. You listen even after Kankri drives up to the house, and Karkat has to practically push you into the passenger seat of the car. You listen the entire way up to the house, and you put her on speaker so the boys can listen too, can talk to her and laugh a little in the midst of all the troubles. You just sit there and listen.

"Vulnerable," Kankri says suddenly, when you're just pulling into your mother's driveway, "That's the word I needed earlier. You look very vulnerable, father, and I don't know how to react to it."

The three of you sat there in the car with those words hanging over your head. None of you dared to say anything, or move anywhere, or even breathe practically. It was true though; you were extremely vulnerable right now. You felt so weak, drinking like you were a stressed college kid and pining over a man you hadn't seen in years. You felt weak and vulnerable and even a little pathetic. You needed to lay down and just think about how to really approach and solve this problem, because you were not letting Orpheus go again. You at least wanted to know why he left, and why he seemed to have a different view on the parting than you. Your memory of back then is hazy but you remember those few months like they happened yesterday. You tried so many times to get ahold of him and he never once responded to you. Not once.

You get out of the car first. You grab the bag that Karkat packed with some protesting from both boys, but you don't really hear what they say. You feel numbed. You need sleep. You need your mom, and goddamn it, you aren't afraid to say that.

You don't bother knocking on the door since she was expecting you, and you do catch her pacing the floor in her slippers and the silk robe you got her for mother's day years ago when it something of a rarity to have. She greets each of you individually, with you being last since you are the main reason that you're here. "Sainath -- "

You hate yourself for doing it, but you cut her off, "Mom, can you check my head real quick? I smashed it pretty badly while I was over at the Amporas' and I want to make sure there's nothing I need to get seriously checked out."

She looks at you with so much emotion that you think you may end up crying again. Years you've gone without crying, without feeling so terrible, without showing such a large weakness to anyone. You have a feeling that she's going to tell you this was bound to happen eventually, that you were bound to break, and that she may thank Orpheus one day for helping that process along. Holding all that emotion in is hardly healthy for the mind or body. But for now, she just smiles, and kisses your forehead, and tells you that of course she'll take a look at you. 

She gives you a tight hug and you give her a shaky sigh. It's been a long day and a long night, but you feel so incredibly happy to finally feel at home again.

Be Orpheus:

"I need to go," he whispers. 

"You don't," you say back, "but you're going to anyway, and I won't stop you. I didn't stop you from leaving then, and I'm not going to now." You realize you're going to regret those words later but in the heat of the moment, you bite them out without hesitation. You stand there, letting the anger and the disappointment run its course through you before draining out. You only sit when you feel your legs trembling and the shaking fists you hadn't realized you were making unfurl at last. You take a slow, deep breath and squeeze your eyes shut when it comes out warbly. 

You think you hear Eridan ask you something from the kitchen but you don't ask him to repeat himself. It's starting to sink in that even though Sainath did leave of his own will, you practically pushed him out once his back was turned. He, though in a very unconventional way, wanted to come back into your life and you pushed him out the second things started to take a turn for the worst. 

You tilt your head back and look up at the ceiling. What the hell is wrong with you two? If you could just clear things up with him, get a few answers, then you know everything would fall into place. You don't have a lot of differences, or at least you didn't back then. Could it be that you two grew that far apart over the years? That you can't even be in the same room anymore, like you and Mirjam or you and Kgosi? At least Mirjam you can avoid; she's been out of town for years. Kgosi is married to your boss; you couldn't avoid him if your life depended on it. Sometimes you think it does.

"Dad! Can you get your head outta your ass for a minute?!" You blink once, then again. You _know_ your son, legal adult or not, did not just speak to you like that in your own house after you just had a pretty damn emotionally scarring moment with an incredibly important person in your life. You know he knows better and you realize he's just trying to snap you out of whatever rut you're currently falling into, but that excuse is not going to stop you from pounding his ass if he doesn't run.

You stand up despite how shaky you still feel. You don't look at Cronus as you pass by him, nor do you look at Eridan when he comes out of the kitchen to see what's going on. You need to go to your room before you do anything else you'll regret. You're liable to do anything in this state.

"Dad! Come on, v-will you just tell us v-wh -- "

"Cronus Ampora! I don't want to hear another word from you tonight!" You have never heard yourself so angry before, especially not at your boys. So much for not doing anything you regret. You put a hand over your face. You don't even remember yelling at your kids when they were young and probably should be yelled at. Mirjam had never really approved of you yelling at the kids and you promised her you wouldn't do it no matter how absolutely bratty they got, or how badly they were mouthing off to either of you. And here you are yelling at your eldest because you're frustrated and feeling terrible. You feel just downright terrible.

"Cronus, please just," you sigh a little, "just let me alone for a little while. I'll clear things up with you two as soon as I clear things up with Sainath first. I promise."

You begin to walk again, and reach your doorway before you hear Eridan speak up. He sounds so heartbroken; his voice seems so small and you feel your chest tighten a little when you hear something akin to fright in his voice. You don't blame him. You remember being afraid of your own dad when he was angry; hell, you were afraid of other kids' dads when they were angry. "Hey dad?"

You don't want to, but you look back at them. Cronus doesn't look anything remotely close to mad; if anything he looks as ready to cry as you feel by now. Maybe you weren't the closest you could be to him, but that still must have hurt to hear from you. Eridan seems to be faring better, not quite as unsteady as Cronus, but still rocking on uneven seas. 

"Yes, Eridan?"

"I lov-love you, dad."

You swallow thickly. "I love you too, son." 

You go into your room and shut the door without another word. Neither of your boys make an attempt to stop you this time. You lean against the closed door and very calmly slide down to the floor. "What a mess you've gotten yourself into now Orpheus. What a mess."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My heart aches  
> I feel like sleeping for years after all that


	9. Finally Wednesday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still waiting for the thrill of writing this to die down  
> I've never uploaded so many times in one month before and still been happy with how the story is turning out  
> Wow

Be Orpheus:

You wake up the next morning still on the floor of your room, stiff from sitting in for such a long time. You carefully unwrap your arms from around your knees, stretch and pop your back and joints, trying to readjust your whole body. You feel exhausted, and you're not looking forward to going to work in the least bit. The only bright side you see to the situation right now is that it's so early you know your boys won't be up so you don't need to face them for a while yet. 

Halfway through getting ready for your morning, you have a small moment of clarity where you realize that ignoring and avoiding everything is what's getting you into these scrapes. You avoided confronting Sainath for the past twenty five years and now it's coming back to haunt you. You avoided talking a few things out with Mirjam, and while things were going downhill with her from the beginning, you think now that maybe you could have had her a few years longer if you had just spoken out instead of retracting like a coward. Maybe you could have had her stay long enough for Eridan to have known her more. And now here you are, avoiding your kids just because you don't want even more conflict that you'll likely automatically find ways to ignore. 

You can feel the headache coming on now. Today is going to be so much fun. 

If nothing else, the day starts off better than the last few days when you see a cooling breakfast on the table. It's small, but it's warm and it'll fill you up until lunch time. You wonder which of your kids made it; usually you can tell by the spices they put in, or the effort of presentation, but this time you can't seem to place a particularly distinguishing quality. If you didn't know any better, you'd say you made it yourself. 

Before you leave the house, you catch sight of one of your index cards taped to the front door, a little lower than where you naturally look. You're assuming Cronus put it up since he's closer to your height than Eridan is. You detach it calmly from the door, reading it in the growing light of the morning. 

Don't worry. Things'll work out eventually. Have a good day dad.

At the bottom, in true flourishing Ampora-style writing, are both of your boys' initials in their respective signatures. 

You quietly tuck the note into one of your jacket pockets, where it will be just barely visible to anyone who's looking. 

Frustrating as they are, you do love your boys, and it's moments like these when you're really reminded that they love you back, no matter what you do.

Be Sainath:

You love the way coffee smells, and you love starting the day off with coffee. The sun has been up longer than you by a few hours. Kankri is staying up in the guest room with Karkat, revelling in being able to relax in this house. When you checked on him last, he was typing away on his computer, likely making sure that all of his college assets were in order. Karkat was sleeping peacefully and quite messily next to him, obviously enjoying not having to go to school. Your mother is sitting next to you on the couch, sipping happily on tea that you prepared for her since you know she doesn't care for coffee. She just keeps it in the house for family and guests because so many people love the drink. 

You have your head resting on her shoulder. You think how even if you were sitting up properly, she would still be a little taller than you. Your mother is taller than anyone you know, save the Makaras, and even then she is rivalling them. You've always loved her height, always wanted to be her height because you find it so strangely comforting to still be able to be wrapped up in her arms no matter what age you are. Maybe you are something of a momma's boy in other people's eyes but when you have a comfort, you don't see why you should deny yourself of that comfort, of that happiness. You would never ask your own kids to do that. You would never expect them to. 

Your mother takes another sip of her drink before setting the cup down. She takes yours as well, placing it next to hers on the coffee table in front of the couch. Her hand goes to your hair, ruffling it up and smoothing it back down, back and forth, soothing your over active thoughts. You told her what's been going on, in possibly too much detail but she didn't seem to mind in the least bit, when you were making the drinks earlier. She gave you time to calm down and she was giving herself time to think. Now it seems you're going to have to address this situation once and for all.

She says one word to you, "Wait."

So you do. You wait for her to say more, or to get up. You wait for her to do something, but nothing happens. You wait for some outside source to interfere but there's nothing. 

"Mother?"

"Yes, dear?"

"Nothing's happening."

She laughs daintily at you, kissing the side of your head in that "you're so very precious" manner that mothers seem to master at some point in their lives. "Sainath, that's because you're an impatient child when it comes to heavy situations, and I know you know that. Ever since you were young, you've been incredibly impatient, always wanting something to be happening. It certainly made getting you to bed a difficult task. I hope you've outgrown that." You don't have the confidence to admit that you haven't. You still have troubles falling asleep without a pill or a drink to help you out. 

"This situation is no different than any other that you haven't been able to wait out. You want something to happen immediately so that you aren't anticipating and worrying. You want it over with." You nod a little because it's true. In addition to being impatient, you don't generally like change, especially when it so heavily involves your emotions. It brings a slew of anxiety that used to shut you down when you couldn't control it well.

"What I'm saying is that you do need to wait now. You have made your move, you've reinforced your choice and shown that you are serious about having a relationship, platonic or otherwise, and now it's not your turn. The game is still in play, Sainath, but you have to wait for the other player to take their turn, without rushing them, or they're going to want to stop playing." You're really glad your mother kept with that phase of your life, when you loved playing games with friends and she learned all the rules and versions just so she could chip into the conversations. The analogy helps you see things so much easier. "You know Orpheus as well as anyone. He's likely going through his own emotional turmoil, but while you solve it by immediately acting and trying to make something happen, he tries to slow it to a stop so he can think about it. You both have very inconvenient ways of dealing with a situation, and quite frankly that's why you made such a nice, balanced couple. But you need to slow down for him until he remembers how to speed up for you. You need to wait. Keep in contact, maybe apologize for the way you've been acting because I must admit, you are a little out of hand right now, but don't push him." She turns you so that you're looking at her, and damn, you're going to start bawling because her eyes are so glassy right now. They aren't sad; they're bright and beautifully green, a rich emerald, but they aren't sad. You think she may actually be proud of you for attempting to even do any of this, unconventional as your methods are. "It'll work out, dear. Don't you worry your pretty little head over it. And if you need to stay up here for a while to take your mind off of it, then you are more than welcome to. I haven't seen you in ages anyhow. We have so much to catch up on."

Somehow, that stands out to you. She wouldn't say that unless she had something extremely important to tell you, something that you may or may not like. Something that may or may not be actually old news and she never told you because she didn't want you to have a panic attack over details about it. 

"Mother," you try to sound very firm but she just smiles at you undeterred, and reaches for your cups again. 

"More coffee, dear?" She pulls away from you before you can answer, heading towards the kitchen. You turn around on the couch, gripping the back of it with nervously tight fingers. You're trying to find words to speak with, and you just can't.

"Mother, tell me. You have something to tell me, and I'm the last person to know, I can feel it. Mother. Mom. Mommy. Ma." You continue on, following her to the kitchen and just repeating different ways to say "mom" until she finally, finally tells you what you've been trying to annoy her into saying.

"I," she draws out the vowel sound long enough to make you shuffle around on the kitchen floor, stopping the moment you notice because god, you really are an impatient child, "may or may not be seeing somebody."

You slump. Not in a disappointed way or even in a negative way. You just feel the energy leave your body and you don't have a want to hold yourself up. 

"What."

"Oh, come now, you don't think you're the only one who can find a little love after years of not having it, do you?"

"What."

"You won't even have to call her mother, I promise."

You feel your eyes go a little wide. "What."

"You have won two spelling bees and one contest on how very well written one of your essays were, and all you can say right now is 'what'? Some son I've raised."

You sit down. What are you supposed to say? Your entire life, you never had another parent besides your mother. She adopted you when you were young, too young to remember the lady who ran the orphanage you were at. She'd never shown interest in finding somebody to help raise you, or even just to be in love with. Or even just to sleep with. Not even as you got older and went out more. Not when you got your own boyfriend and there was a lot of suggestive activities going on around the house. The closest she ever got to anything like that was being a surrogate mother for a couple, and you know that did not involve any sexual activities. 

You have a sudden want to talk to Porrim now. She's younger than you by a few years, and Kanaya is even younger than her, but you had still been friends with them. You spoke to them ocassionally still, about as often as you do your mother. 

"I have questions."

"I knew you would."

You can _hear_ the happiness in her voice. She will gladly answer every question you have about this woman and she will love doing it. Right off the bat, you feel yourself being partial to the relationship, not that you have any say. If she can make your mother so jovial just with a thought, with a few words, when she isn't even there to say anything -- it's just a good sign in your eyes. 

You find your thoughts straying to Orpheus for a moment, to Friday when you were washing dishes together. 

You smile, very subtly, very briefly. Maybe waiting won't be so bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Then again this chapter is fairly short but That's okay  
> I just wanted to conclude that little mini problem  
> The next one will be longer most likely


	10. Friday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew  
> This took way too long for me  
> But ayyyyy new chappie of my fave story

Be Sainath:

You decide to trust Kankri with the house for a few days since he is old enough to be on his own and look after Karkat without your assistance, legally, anyhow; you know he's been taking care of his baby brother since they were put up for adoption. It's one of the main reasons you refused to separate them when you had the choice. You just waited another month and saved enough money to be able to care for them both properly. 

You're a little wary to do so, but you don't give any rules to Kankri. You tell Karkat to try not to stay up very late at night and you tell Kankri to be careful when grabbing things out of one of the cabinets because the shelf is loose, but you say nothing else otherwise. You're putting a hell of a lot of trust in them and you're really just hoping they don't completely deplete that trust.

You think that time to yourself, and time with your mother, and perhaps time with this mysterious woman she's been seeing will help clear your head and help you relax. You go through the motions of the days hour by hour, helping your mother clean or make dinner or organize plans like you used to when you were younger, and for the most part, you feel so incredibly calm taking things this slow, and not having to worry about if Kankri and Karkat are doing alright because Karkat still has school and you know Kankri barely even knows what a party is let alone how to throw one. The worst he could do is invite Cronus over and utilize the alone time, but as far as you know, Cronus is trying to get a job and is busying himself but applying everywhere. It occurs to you that there are 24 hours in a day and applying for jobs takes very few of them but Kankri is his own man. You can't exactly tell him to avoid intimacy with his boyfriend. You certainly never did.

There are moments like this one where Orpheus crosses your thoughts, but you don't shake them off. You let them run their course, message him once or twice though he has yet to respond to you, and then go off to do some other task that you should have done earlier or were in the middle of doing. Like telling your work a day late that you were taking some time off because of family issues. You try convincing yourself that meeting your mother's girlfriend counts as an issue but the more you hear about her, the more you just can't place anything bad on her. You take that as a good sign. Your mother says she's coming for a visit on Saturday, which, by the time you hear about it, is the next day. 

You wind up going to the attic and tidying up out of nerves. You're not afraid of meeting her, and you're far from afraid of not liking her after all the praise you've heard, but just the idea of her, of somebody being with your mother and taking care of her and doing so many beautiful and sweet things with her; it's enough to make any son nervous a least a little. So you tidy up the attic because you don't know exactly what you'll stumble upon or what you're really allowed to touch up here.

And then you ironically nearly trip over a box you'd moved out of your way in the first place. Unlike when you originally saw it, you notice your mother's beautifully curvy handwriting on the side. Your name is written in big jade letters, covering most of that side of the faded brown. You quietly pick it up and sneak to the room you're staying in with it. It's not taped shut and it's in fairly good condition despite all the dust on it. Maybe that's why it looks pale, rather than being sunbleached and old. 

About an hour later you have various pictures and events from your childhood spread out around you on the bed. You're laying on your stomach, looking them over as you take them out of the box like you're reaching for a potato chip from an emptying bag. You just can't stop. Your mother keeps everything. There's pictures of you when you lived by the pool and still had to use water wings to staying floating. There's pictures of you at the spelling bees and the few times you were in the plays in middle school and of you on your first day of freshman year because your mother had it in her head to make one of your first day of high school and then recreate it on your last day of senior year. You start looking for the senior one to compare directly because in the freshman one you're this tiny little child with round glasses and you still have braces on the top half of your teeth, and there's an arm around the only two friends you had back then, Constance Peixes and Sae-Yon. It brings back so many memories and a few bittersweet feelings. They'd let you in so easily. You still miss Constance sometimes. You hear she became a powerful boss in a fairly well-known business that you have thankfully never had to deal with it. You find that it suits her.

You find the senior counterpart a few moments later and you try very hard not to cry at this point. You know it'll happen eventually; all these memories and overwhelming emotions were bound to become too much. You set the two pictures in front of you and just look at them. Sae-Yon is still on your left in the picture, and taller than you instead of the same height. He's got you locked under his arm and you can still remember feeling him digging his fist into your head. You remember him saying how you couldn't possibly feel it underneath all of your thick hair. Disiya is laughing behind you, lightly tugging on your school shirt in an attempt to get you away from Sae. Salvadore is sitting on the ground in front of Sae-Yon, looking up at you and grinning like he knows he could help but he won't because he likes the way things are playing out. You find that you miss him too, and his all around jovial attitude. He was always so happy, always ready to support you in your decisions even if they weren't exactly the best ones. You think he had a crush on you and was just too afraid to say anything.

On the right of you, speaking of crushes, was Orpheus. He has the most beautiful smile on his face in the picture and it's captured just in time to see it before he covers his mouths. He's laughing at the whole scenario; the picture, Sae-Yon turning it into something goofy and silly, Disiya futilely trying to help. You can still hear his laugh in your head. His scars are still big and bright across his face, still jagged on the edges and his eyes are squeezed shut so you can see them both in their entirety. You find your thumb running over them absently, like you would on nights when you and him would just lay down together, hardly doing anything. You loved the way they felt. You wonder if they feel the same now that they've healed a lot more. 

You groan and bury your face into the sheets under you. You can't stand this whole waiting thing. You want to talk to him about all this bullshit that's been going on and you really want to just apologize for what you've been doing and whatever it is that you did back then to make him cut it off with you.

You think about that for a moment. He never said a word to you after he and you went off to your colleges. Not a single word after just a week or two. 

"Hey mom!"

You wait a few minutes before deciding she didn't hear you. You go to her room down the hall. Her door is open and she's just on her laptop, but she looks so focused on whatever it is she's looking at. 

She looks up at you after a few moments, gently closing the technology that you aren't entirely sure when she bought or learned how to use. "Yes, Sai?"

You shake off your confusion from her being on a computer at all. "You know, he technically never broke up with me. He went off, and I went off, and he never explicitly said "I'm breaking up with you" to me."

You see her thinking it over, running through what you've told her now and what you've said before. And then she starts laughing without holding back, and her arm goes around her stomach and her hand goes to her mouth, and gosh, you love your mother's laughter. You start laughing too because it's just such a funny concept to think about. By the false laws of relationships you have been dating Orpheus for nearly thirty years and he's cheated on you for at least a few of them since you've heard Cronus and Eridan mention a mother. He's had a wife before. You're a little disheartened by the thought but not enough to spoil this moment. 

You wonder if you should mention it to him. You think you will one day. 

Be Orpheus:

You know it's extremely rude to ignore him, and whenever your phone goes off with a text message, you can feel Cronus giving you this look like he's trying to silently encourage you to say something. Even if he's not near you, you can feel his eyes on you, just burning into your guilt and doubts and god damn, your kid should not have this much power over you. You can't take it. 

Every time you try to message him back though, you find yourself at a loss for words. You read over his messages and you know he knows you do if his phone does what yours does, which you think it does, and he doesn't comment on your lack of speaking. He just goes on, telling you about little things he thinks of or says throughout the day, and you'll admit you've caught yourself grinning at how amusing Sai can be. You just have no idea how to respond to him, and neither of your boys can help you because they aren't going to know what to say to him either. 

And then you get one message from him that changes all that. It's a picture of a very old photo of a very familiar time in your life. One where you laughed every day and knew exactly where you stood in life. You weren't this confused mess of a man. You knew what you wanted and who you wanted to be with. It fills you with a sense of nostalgia that you haven't felt in years. Seeing the pictures, remembering how happy and blissful you'd felt when the picture was taken — it all makes you feel like a sappy old man, reminiscing on the good days. Not that the present ones weren't good, but the idea is still there. You quietly save the picture and set your phone down next to you.

"What happened to us back then? What did I do to make you leave?" You rest your head in your hands, an action that you find yourself doing more often as of late. You lightly grip your hair, just enough to keep you focused on this for once. You need to address the situation with Sainath or you'll both end up suffering serious consequences.

You take a deep breath and decide that multitasking is the best way to think and stay calm. You can clear your head while you clear out some other part of the house. Probably the basement. There's an area of your basement that is just filled with boxes with items that get packed away but never unpacked. You could probably stand to clean some of them out, condense them down. You've been meaning to do that for years anyhow. Several of them are full of childhood memories, like your baby book and school yearbooks and a few trophies that you don't really remember receiving. The years on them tell you that you were under five so that explains a lot. 

But then you stumble upon a box of Mirjam's possessions that you figure were left behind on accident. It's fairly heavy, in that "there's a lot of small, lighter things packed in here" way. You set it aside to look through later and decide if it's worth calling her over. She had never accused you of stealing any of her items or asked if something was still over here, but you never know. She could have forgotten about it, or deemed it unimportant. The call will likely do you good anyway; Cronus will probably want to talk to her for a while. You don't think Eridan would want to, since he hardly remembers her, but Cronus will want to, even if he doesn't speak up. He misses Mirjam more than you could ever describe and more than he'll ever admit.

You eventually discover a box filled to the brim with tapes trapped beneath the pile you've been disassembling. There's a tape with your wedding on one, and you're very tempted to throw it away once you realize what it is, but the happiness you feel from the memory, from seeing Mirjam walking down the aisle dressed in white and blue that hugs every plump curve she had back then stops you. The memories aren't saddening or even painful. They're just very old and they make you long for the past. There's a tape for Cronus' first and second birthdays, and you can't help but smile a little when he stares at the candles like they're pure magic on a stick. You wonder if that's why he started delving into all that, loving magic and wizards and nearly dying when the Harry Potter movies came out. Funny to think that Cronus is who he is because of a few candles.

You don't really start paying attention to the videos until they start delving into some of your favorite memories and the longer videos that were filmed by an amateur, usually Cronus. There's one where you're in a pool with Eridan when he was just this tiny little kid, splashing around in the shallow end of the pool. It's your old house, in your old town, maybe a few months before Mirjam even mentioned getting a divorce. You watch as you wade through the deep end of the pool then over to Eridan, who had been watching you at that point. You dip under the surface of the water and come back up with him on your shoulders now, and you smile both in the video and in the present when you hear him squeal and giggle and see him hold on to you. You think this was one of the few times he'd had his floaties off, to get used to floating and supporting himself.

"Mr Shark has arrived at the station. All aboard for a trip to the deep end." The camera is set down on a nearby outdoor table, still filming the scene fairly well. Cronus hops into the water and grabs onto one of your arms, and not long after you see Mirjam on your other arm, giggling as she indulges in the games. She never had been one for being in the pool, but the few times she did go in, she always looked happy being with you, being with the kids. Even when she goes under the water briefly from a small miscalculation in the water level, even when Eridan splashes her with water or Cronus goes to cling to her instead, she looks so absolutely at peace with where she is in life.

You wonder what you did wrong to her. You wonder what you did wrong to Sai. Your family never really was successful with relationships, but they always found somebody. Your mother loved your father, and he loved her too. He just didn't care much for you. You had loved Sainath, and you had adored Mirjam on a different scale than you had Sai, yet something tore you from both of them. It made you worry for Cronus. You didn't want to see him lose somebody the ways you did, especially when he'd been denied so many times before. You suppose you should be grateful it hadn't gotten serious between those girls. 

You turn the videos off after that. You've had enough reminiscing time to last you forever and then some. You go back to the basement, thinking maybe you'll look through other boxes. Your eyes fall on the one of Mirjam's that you found earlier. It's taped up pretty heavily, unmarked minus the printed logos already on there and Mirjam's name. Patches of dust cover it, some parts likely blocked off by other boxes, but the parts that do have dust are so caked with it that your finger doesn't even remove all of it. You're starting to wonder how long you've had it down here for.

You take it upstairs and grab the box cutter from one of the kitchen drawers. A few slices later has the top completely off, since you don't think you'll need this box or its contents after this examination. Seeing them, however, you already start to think otherwise.

"What the hell? How did Mirjam get these?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahaha cliff hanger ;o)  
>  ~~I love you guys I'm so sorry~~


	11. Saturday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry about the sudden slow updates but my personal life is getting pretty messy and it's slowing a lot of my progress down  
> Its all getting sorted out tho so things should pick back up in the next week or so

Be Sainath:

He first tries to contact you while you're cooking up lunch with your mother. His text message tone is muffled slightly by your pocket, but it's loud enough to hear and promptly ignore. He messages you periodically throughout the rest of preparations and while you're both setting up tables, which actually starts getting you angry. You haven't looked at the messages, and you know he knows you haven't; isn't it obvious by now that you're busy? There's still a few minutes before your guest arrives so you do decide to indulge in him despite what your better instincts tell you.

Today at 11:33 a.m.

Sainath we need to talk  
Sai  
Sai im serious we have to talk  
Sai i am extremely confused right now about a lot of whats happened between us. i need you to get over here and explain what the hell is going on  
Sainath  
come on sai i cant do this on my own. i dont know where to start with this mess

You don't say anything to him. You aren't entirely sure what he's talking about and you have to admit, you are a little worried but it's going to have to wait until tomorrow or tonight if it really is that urgent. You're not letting Orpheus ruin this day for you. You are not letting his sudden epiphany about how big of an asshole he was to you get in the way of meeting one of the most important people in your mother's life. You put your phone on vibrate only and shove it back in your pocket. You waited twenty five years to hear from him again; he can wait a few hours to hear from you. 

She arrives not long after you discard Orpheus from your thoughts, and the first thing you notice is that she is absolutely beautiful. She's not dressed overly fancy but the long white scientist coat she wears over the black of her shirt sleeves and leggings tells you she's trying to impress just a tiny bit. It's certainly working; you are definitely impressed by her appearance. Her hair is blonde and flares out around her shoulders before stopping. There's a bounce to the rest of her hair and the long curl on the one side that matches her cheerful smile and the excited handshake she gives you. You don't quite approve of the dark color that's on her lips but it looks wonderful against her skin tone. Her cheeks are flushed lightly.

"Roxy Lalonde. I've heard so much about you!" Her smile is wide and her teeth are a little crooked but they're bright and clean. You realize that you're noticing every tiny detail but you really can't seem to stop yourself by that point. You have a tendency to do that when you're nervous about meeting somebody so important. You've always done that; in fact, you still remember that your very first publisher had a molar removed the day before you met her and her left incisor was chipped from when she fell earlier that week. She had a scratch on her cheek from that too. If nothing else, the amount of detail you notice gets put to good use.

"Sainath Vantas," you don't pause when you see the glimpse of confusion in her expression when your last name doesn't match up with you mother's, "and I could say quite the same. The past few days have been very insightful as far as information goes." She giggles quietly at you and you wonder if it's because you sound so formal. It wouldn't surprise you. Your boys would laugh too whenever they heard you talking with "fancy words," as they used to call them. Karkat still jokes around about that especially when he hears Kankri saying one, and you've heard him say one or two himself, "insufferable" in particular. Roxy does seem like the type to find a few fancy words humorous. You smile all the same hearing her.

"Well I have no doubts that you're Dona's son, being all prim and proper and adorable." If you weren't a grown man, you think she might have pinched your cheek. You've never been so happy to be over 40. She giggles again, a light bell tinkling sound, and you catch your mother just smiling as she ushers you all into the dining room. You continue talking to Roxy up until she sees the feast on the table. Her sudden silence, the sparkling teary look in her eyes and the way she hugs your mother tells you she wasn't expecting lunch to come with this visit. She has all the joy of a child on Christmas morning built up in that hug and the following brief kiss. It's odd to witness but you don't feel uncomfortable or even protective of your mother like some kids would be. And you know even at this age, some children would still be somewhat freaked out by seeing their only parent with somebody romantically. You actually enjoy seeing your mother getting the attention. You know it gets lonely up here, especially since you've stopped visiting every month. You just haven't been able to lately and it made you feel awful but knowing she isn't always alone eases that emotion quite a lot. 

They hold hands on the tabletop as you all eat in a comfortable silence. You don't think they realize you notice when Roxy feeds your mother a fork full of pasta from her plate. It makes you smile. You don't comment on it.

You're starting to feel full when you notice a tattoo on the inside of her wrist. It's a small rose, stemless with purple colored petals. The amount of detail put into such a small tattoo is astounding and makes it look even more gorgeous to look at. You find yourself entranced by it. She catches you staring after a few moments, and while you look away in embarrassment, she just smiles softly. There's a bittersweet twinkle to her eyes. They look a little pinkish in the lighting.

You're about to ask what the story behind such a beautiful image is when your phone starts incessantly buzzing against your thigh. You're almost positive that it's just Orpheus tired of trying to talk to you through messaging, but there's a small part of you wondering if maybe it's Kankri telling you he burned down the house and Karkat got kidnapped in the commotion of trying to salvage something. You quietly excuse yourself to the kitchen and answer the phone, half forgetting that it would have easily told you who was calling.

"Hello?"

"Christ, Sai, I've been trying to get a hold of you for the past two hours now -- "

"Oh, yes, it's not so nice to wait is it? Try doing it for a year and then talk to me." You immediately regret snapping like that, and yes, perhaps you could've said to him that you were busy and you would talk later, but why should you have? He hasn't wanted to talk to you for several days and now all of a sudden he needs to get your attention and it can't wait a day.

There's a small silence before he speaks again, "Okay. I deserved that. But seriously, Sainath, I need to talk to you. In person. How soon can you get here?"

You sigh, and pinch the bridge of your nose with your free hand. You look back in the dining room where Roxy and your mother are chatting quietly. Your mother catches your eye and you see the worry spread on her face when she sees how troubled you must look right now. You quietly return to the other room. "I'm at my mother's right now, Orpheus, and I'm fairly busy meeting her girlfriend. The earliest I probably can and am willing to come back to your house is tomorrow." 

There's more silence, longer than last. Your mother scares you a little by coming up behind you and resting her hand on your shoulder. Roxy is in the doorway to the room, looking worried and confused, and you're wondering how much your mother has told her about the situation that you're in. 

"Alright. Yeah, that'll work. It'll give me a chance to figure some other things out."

You don't respond to him.

Be Orpheus:

You hang up when you realize Sai's done speaking with you. He's pissed as hell for you interrupting his day, and you can more than understand that because you know as well as anyone that Dona's never shown interest in a partner before so it's a special occasion. But you _needed_ to at least let him know that you found these. Which you didn't, now that you think about it, but he's coming over tomorrow so you'll be able to show him then. 

You look down in the box, and pick up one of the letters that are on the top. It's old, a good twenty five years old, and it's addressed to you. From Sainath. It's unopened, and looks like it's barely even been touched before. Like it was just placed in the box as soon as it was received. That would certainly explain why you've never seen them before, and why Sainath is so hurt by all this. All this time, he really was trying to speak to you, trying to talk to you, and all this time, you were the one who was technically ignoring him. You wish you'd known about these; you would've responded to each and every one of them.

You want to read one. You want to open one and read what he had to say, read about what you missed and should have been seeing before. You're afraid to though; you're afraid to even touch them again despite still holding one. All this time, you'd had these and didn't even know. All this time.

You need to call Mirjam. You need to call her and you need to get answers now.

The front door opens before you can even dial her number. Eridan is staying over at Karkat's, which is silently worrying you now that you know that Sainath isn't there with them, so you know it's Cronus coming in from another day out at interviews. He looks pretty damn excited when you look up at him, and despite how rocky your relationship has been with him, he sits down next to you and starts babbling away about how he's a going to get this job that's about ten or so minutes away and they're going to give him a trial period starting on Monday, and he just sounds so _purely, wholly delighted_ that you can't help but melt into the couch and just listen to him talk, smiling softly the whole time. And there's one point when he pauses, aware of the fact that you were doing something and he completely interrupted you but you wave to urge to continue and so he does, going on about the day in general and anything he can. You don't remember the last time you had Cronus for so long or so excitedly. 

You really should be addressing the problem at hand. You need to call Mirjam and finally do something about these letters. It's bad enough that you ignored them all last night and most of the morning. You need to resolve this already so you can work on building your relationship with Sai back up.

But your relationship with your son is much more salient so you don't mind waiting just a little longer if it means salvaging what you can with your eldest boy. You're pretty sure that if nothing else, both Sainath and Mirjam would understand that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sssssssssassy sainath


	12. Sunday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I could remember what I wanted to write here but it's 2:37 in the morning and I'm not entirely sure what's going on anymore  
> Have some feels my friends

Be Sainath:

After you explained the contents of your call to your mother and subsequently Roxy, the rest of the evening goes rather smoothly. Your mother makes warm drinks that you can smell from two rooms over, a secret recipe of hers for special occasions and rainy days that tastes like coffee and cream and chocolate and unadulterated heaven. You've never seen her make it and you don't know what she puts into the jar where she keeps most of the dry ingredients for it. You just know that you've never been able to replicate it and that nothing ever goes wrong as long as it's in your system. 

You give them an hour or so to themselves after the drinks are gone, and end up making a surprise dessert out of boredom. Your mother must smell it at some point or wonder why she hears metal clanging against glass when you're whisking brownie mix together. You watch curiously as she adds just a little more milk and a few pinches of sugar to the mixture before she lets you resume stirring. It makes you feel a little proud, knowing that she hardly wanted to do anything to your cooking. You always did have difficulty with that aspect of life but she was determined to help you sustain yourself on more than just ramen and sandwiches like other kids, especially when she found out that neither Orpheus nor Sae-Yon could cook, which isn't true but they both had one mishap in front of her and she immediately turned into a worry wart. You actually find yourself missing Orpheus' cooking. He could cook the best fish in the world, even your mother could admit that if she actually tried it.

You end up upstairs not long after the brownies are finished, talking to your boys right up until it's time for Roxy to leave, when you come back down for a farewell. It worries you that she's leaving so late, but she assures you that she isn't driving far from here. She kisses your cheek softly. You have a bad feeling there's a lipstick mark there now. With Roxy gone, your mother kisses your forehead and tells you to get some rest lest you be exhausted and snappy tomorrow. She says good night to your boys over the phone, as do you, and you head up to your room for rest like instructed. You aren't looking forward to tomorrow in the least bit. It's going to be another rush of awkward and frantic emotions and you can already feel your lips tingly. You abhor how much you want to kiss him again; you're supposed to be mad, damn it. Or at least keeping a clear enough head that you don't let those thoughts get to you until _after_ all this is worked out. God, you're bad at this.

You aren't looking forward to going over to Orpheus' when you're laying in bed with your eyes wide open and feeling cold as ice; you aren't looking forward to it when you silently eat breakfast with your mother or when you're on your way to his place; and you are most definitely not looking forward to it when Eridan is the one to answer the door, and Orpheus' restrained voice is coming from another room, still somewhat calm but quickly losing that. You can hear hints of the accent his father had in his voice, which means he won't be calming down any time soon. It pains you hearing him so aggravated.

Cronus is sitting patiently on the couch, and you sit beside him. Eridan takes the cushion on your other side. There's two boxes on the coffee table in front of you. One is full of old VHS tapes and a select few DVDs that you have the temptation to sort through to see if you can find any Sae-Yon had recorded from your high school years. You searched high and low for the ones of when you all watched _Rocky Horror_ and neatly got blackout drunk. God, if your mother knew about that she would downright disown you. Not really, but you would be in some major trouble, grown man or not. The other box has letters practically overflowing from the open top, unopened and familiar to you. You lift one up by the edge with a trembling hand, afraid that if you touch it too much the envelope will crumble beneath your touch. You turn it over and feel your chest _clench_ painfully right where your ribs begin to part from each other. There's a tiny little heart on the tip of the flap where the envelope is sealed shut, indicating that this was an early letter. The first two months that you wrote him you put these hearts on your letters and they eventually disappeared when you realized he wasn't responding to you. You still wrote him though, hoping through a hopeless situation. The last letter you sent is the only other one with a symbol after the hearts, marked by a tiny purple "X" instead.

Eridan picks on up as well, one without any marking, you notice. "How-w many are there?"

You shrug, not entirely sure of the exact number. "A year's worth. Just about." Your voice cracks a little as you speak.

"Kar w-would be proud."

You look over at him questioningly. He smiles at you in that "I know you're upset but I'm still trying to keep the mood up in hopes you'll perk up too" way. He looks so much like his father in that moment; the smile, the light brown eyes and peachy skin tone and rich black hair. Although Orpheus' is a nice orange-ish blond, he dyed his hair that same black in high school. The only dyed part of Eridan's hair is the purple streak that runs through it. You know Cronus' hair is dyed fully black but he looks less like Orpheus and more like his mother, you're assuming. His skin is tanner, darker, and his eyes are pale blue if you remember correctly, almost grey. They're beautiful.

You come back to the present when you hear Eridan speaking again, "You pulled a mov-ve from one a his fav-favorite rom-coms."

You stare at him, mulling this information over and yes, you suppose you did do the same as the woman in that movie. Ally, you think her name was. You don't quite remember, you saw the movie so long ago. You do however remember that the actress who played her was quite gorgeous, all things considered. You don't have the heart to tell Eridan that you were in college quite a few years before the book or movie ever came out though; you were just a sap who missed his boyfriend that refused to use technology, which you didn't blame him for. Technology was shit was when you were growing up. The whole scenario makes you laugh for a few moments, an airy little nostalgic sound that Cronus smiles at and Eridan joins into.

The moment is broken by a bang from the kitchen and an outburst of French shouting that has chills running up your spine. You aren't sure if they come from the anger that you hear in Orpheus' voice and the fear that it instinctually strikes into the three of you on the couch, or if it's the fact that the sound of the foreign words is so familiar and awakens old memories and emotions that are hardly appropriate for the situation. You're incredibly conflicted. All you really know is that you have this urge to be with him, to give him some sort of comfort and stability when he's so distressed, and that's all that's pushing you to move into the kitchen where he's on the phone, leaning over the counter, his free hand curled in a white-knuckled fist. 

You don't think you could feel angry with him if you tried.

Be Orpheus:

You admit that calling Mirjam first thing in the morning was not one of your better ideas. She's exhausted, you're exhausted, and you can already feel the stress building because you don't know when Sai is coming over and you don't know how long this conversation will take. It's a mess, but you _have_ to get it done even if it ends in disaster.

You start off with a little tired small talk, very businesslike, very stable, but still friendly enough to have her warm up to you a little. Like letting a cat sniff your hand before you pet it. You hear her sip coffee quietly over the line and she mentions hearing you do the same. It's an odd moment that you share with her, one you wish you could skip over now because you're having flashbacks of when she still lived here and you two would spend the mornings together, Cronus too tired to be making any noise or even still asleep if he was young enough. 

This is _not_ the way you wanted to start this day or this conversation or even this relationship you're trying to build back up with Sainath. Shit.

She catches onto your game fairly quickly once you go quiet. She can tell you're stalling and starts questioning you in that silky, deceiving voice she has this early in the morning. She's a siren on the sea, she is. You can't avoid the situation once she calls you out on it so you take a deep breath and spill out most of the details of the past week, right up to finding the letters. You leave out the make out session on the couch; you can hardly even bring yourself to think about that. Not right now.

"I know."

You tense. "You know?"

"Oh, yes, my dear Orpheus, I know all about the letters. I was the one who put them in that box, after all. That's why my name is on it." She says it like you should be proud of her, like she was doing you a favor by taking your personal items and putting you through a full year of misery. Your mouth hangs open a tiny bit. "You _did_ tell me to compile your mail so you could sort through it later."

You can't believe what you're hearing. "Letters from my boyfriend of three years is not something I would consider to be a second priority or junk mail, Mirjam. Because that's what I said to set aside. Second priority and junk mail. They're also all in _one box, Mirjam_. They're all packed away and unopened in one goddamn box. And you wanna know something else? I can specifically recall you telling me on multiple occasions that I didn't have any word from Sainath. Every time I asked if there was a note or anything from him, you said no. You lied to me. For twenty five years." You're trying not to shout at this point because you don't know the time and you don't know if your boys are awake yet. You don't particularly want to give them flashbacks of their mother and you arguing in the early hours of the morn during the divorce. Your anger is rising quickly though and that means your voice is too because you never really learned how to control that.

" _Please_ , Orpheus. If you really loved him and cared about him as half as much as you're pretending to now, you would have questioned why he stopped talking to you. You would have sent him letters and love notes instead of asking for his. You wouldn't have married me when I told you I could treat you so much better than him, which I have. I gave you two beautiful sons to love, and encouragement to go for broke when your job became dull and you needed a boost, and I gave you memories that I know you still smile at even now. Could _**he**_ have given you all that, _Orphaner_?"

You burst. You actually blank out for a few moments, you are so overcome with emotion, mainly rage. You know that she's right, that you should have done more on your end to try and keep what you had going, but you also know that she has so little regard for other people when she's on the prowl for something she wants that she went so far as sabotaging the happiest and most successful dating experience you'd ever had and for what? The few years of marriage you had with her? The satisfaction of having you all to herself in her web of deceit? 

It isn't entirely your fault that you lost contact with him and isn't even remotely his. Neither of you are to blame for it. It's a relief to know what happened and why it happened despite how enraging it all is.

You freeze and you stop mid-word when a hand is placed on top of the fist you have on the kitchen counter. The grip they have is firm but still soft, still gentle. You look over, expecting to see Cronus or maybe Eridan since he's been calming you down a lot recently but you're faced with worried chocolate brown eyes and a soothing, small smile. His hand moves atop of yours, slow and meticulous. Mirjam says something to you over the line but you don;t hear it because you're focused on Sainath and how he looks so afraid right now. He's a mess of emotions that must be as confusing to him as they are to you. 

You don't really remember what you had hoped to accomplish by calling your ex-wife minus finding out the complete and honest truth. Yelling at her wouldn't bring the years back. Yelling at her wouldn't take the weight off your shoulders or make it any easier to look at one of your best friends and not feel guilty for all you did to him, however unintentional it was. Yelling at her wouldn't solve any of the problems that had surfaced. Your problems with her, your days with her, were over, and had been for years. 

"Helloooooooo? Earth to Orpheus?"

"Sorry," you say absently, still watching Sai, "I need to go. I was expecting company today and they're here now." You hang up without another word or second thought. Sainath squeezes your hand in the silence that follows.

You open your mouth to speak but he hushes you. You don't know how long he's been here, or what he heard before he came into the kitchen with you, if anything. You don't even know if what you were saying was comprehensible. Like your father, you have a bad habit of reverting back into French when you become overexcited because it's what you were raised on. You weren't born or raised in France. You'd never even seen it except in old photos. But it was your first language because your father refused to let you speak anything else inside the house. 

"All this time," he says, with so much awe and pity in his voice. You didn't even know that was a possible emotional combination. He places his free hand on your cheek. "All this time, you've been hurting and beating yourself up over it too." His hand moves so that your finger interlock and you let him squeeze yours tightly, trying to convey all the sorrow and the apology through that one motion. "All this time, you thought you'd done something wrong. All this time, you — I — I shouldn't have stopped —"

You pull him into your arms, effectively cutting him off. Your arms wrap around his frame and you just hold him as close as possible, face buried in his mess of hair, breathing as calm as you can make it when you feel like you're shaking.

"Orpheus?"

"Sainath."

You sigh out his name. It's a relief to say it without fear, without all the emotional blowout your head goes through just trying to wrap your head around what he represents. He melts into your arms after that, and holds onto you like you're going to flee at the last minute. You've been doing that for the past week, after all.

"Not anymore. I'm not leaving this time, Sai." 

He just nods against the crook of your neck. You mean it though. Even if you don't have what you used to again, even if you just stay friends or have something even better, you're not going to leave. You're not going to put him through all that again. 

Never again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm never writing mindfang again that was so much fun but gooooood I feel bad DX


	13. Eridan's Version of Sunday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Asdfghjkl awkwardly just forgot I finished this during my sleepover too

Be Eridan:

The house is deathly silent once your father stops speaking. You actually start worrying by how quickly it becomes quiet and how long it stays that way before Cro finally decides to go into the kitchen to check on what's going on. He comes back not two seconds after looking into the kitchen, and sighs as he plants himself back down on the couch. His head goes straight to his hands, and just swings, back and forth, back and forth in just a tiny "no" motion. 

"It's a sign," you hear him mutter, "It's a sign that I need to hurry the hell up and mow-move outta this house or things are gonna get really v-weird between me and pa." Your nose scruntches up at that. Were things not weird before? Your dad and brother never really had a steady relationship. Your dad always wants more for Cro than what he has and Cro always challenges that because nine out of ten times they didn't agree on what would be best. Their relationship was always strained and then suddenly fine again, and it was always so weird and strange and you just don't understand it at all.

You shuffle over to the kitchen and as casually as you can, peer in through the doorway at your dad and Mr Vantas. They're just sitting at the table, a little close together but their voices are low so you just chalk it up that. They're just catching up on they missed over the years. You aren't entirely sure of the whole story, and you don't think Cro or the Vantas' are either, but you do know that they haven't talked in ages and neither of them had wanted that to happen. It actually gives you some amount of courage to try and talk to Fef again, after two or so months of silence with her. The two of you recently stopped talking due to relationship complications. You don't want to lose her as a friend though, or wait twenty five years in fear of contacting her. You don't want to end up like your dad, keeping that smile off a his face just because somebody's missing from your life. 

You retire to your room without really talking to your brother again. It takes some time, but you do eventually give Feferi a quick little how are you doing message. You aren't really expecting her to respond immediately or at all really, but she does, no quirk and no smilies, but at least it's _something_ , and it makes you so overjoyed to know that she doesn't completely hate you anymore. You can still save this. You're _going_ to save this.

"Thank you, Mr Vantas."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eridan is such an oblivious and precious bby


	14. Still Sunday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh does this still exist? Hahaha ha ha.....yeah it does oops  
> So yeah the main story is actually coming to a close soon  
> I figured it'd be better to do some mini one shots after this instead since it would feel out of place here? Idk it made sense at first

Be Orpheus:

You have never felt quite so content as you do now. You have felt this jovial; twenty some years with two wonderful sons has made you feel that way plenty of times before. You have felt this relieved; Eridan had pneumonia once before and you swear that day was torture because he never seemed to be geting better. You thought you were going to lose him. Not once though, in all your years, have you ever felt so content to just hold somebody and hear their breathing by your ear, and feel their pulse sync up with yours. Not even when you held your wife at night, few as those times were as the years went by. Not even when your boys had nightmares or passed out on your bed because you were all too lazy to move or too comfortable being in each other's prescence.

You don't want him to pull back but you don't stop him when he does. He doesn't leave your grip though. He stays in, moving back just far enough for you to see his almost black-brown eyes and the gentle smile that made you fall for him all those years ago. You can't help yourself at that point; you kiss him, slow and smooth, and he doesn't pull away from you like you expected him to. He presses his lips back to yours in that same slow, thought out manner, hands still holding on to the back of your shirt like he'll die if he lets go. You feel him relax though as you kiss him and hold him, and eventually rub at his back from beneath his shirt. He mumbles a little complaint about how cold your hands are but he doesn't seem to mind _that_ much with the way his back is arching towards it.

Cronus, you find, is a nagging reminder that you aren't a teenager anymore and that there's still a few more bumps in the road to this relationship that needs to be smoothed out. You pull back once you see him in the edge of your vision, watching him walk out of the kitchen doorway not long after. For a moment, you think about how there needs to be a talk, needs to be a brief or long conversation between all of you, both of your families, about what exactly is going on and what's going to happen. For a moment, you're a responsible grown man with a highly important job and rapidly growing love life again.

But then you sink into the feel of where you are now, with your hand on Sainath's back, and his hands on your cheeks, fingers absently toying with the ends of your hair, and you just can't seem to resist the urge to kiss him again. He senses you're distracted now though, and of course he refuses to let that go like you want. You don't stop kissing him, and he doesn't stop talking between each press of lips.

"You can't avoid it," he murmurs, voice low, "I'm thinking it too. Don't worry. We can work through the rest of these, these problems together." He stops for a moment, getting lost in the moment like you are because you're extremely incessant and you've had enough emotional stimulation today. You just want to take a minute to pretend nothing else is going to happen, but he continues anyway, ever taking the lead in whatever dance you two have decided. "Really though," he makes a small hum in the back of his throat as you remember you have a hand up his shirt and start running it along his back again, "we need to talk because all I can, can think about now is how I should change my facebook status to _It's complicated_. Who knew that option would actually come in handy?" His laugh is breathless and airy.

You're having a little trouble saying that you once loved such a complete moron. Still though, at least he makes you laugh.

Be Sainath:

You wonder when he last laughed, truly laughed with that deep rumble and not just a forced chuckle or two for the sake of appearances. The tiniest drop of humor, a joke that your kids and almost anyone else you know would have groaned at, has him bursting into quiet but hearty laughing. You're willing to say that he almost seems afraid of making the noise, that he's so unfamiliar with it that he isn't sure how to react. "I'm blaming the lack of oxygen for this little giggle fest of yours. No more kisses for you, mister." That, of course, only makes him laugh more.

You both sit once he's calmed down enough, thigh to thigh, hands above the table like your generation was apparently taught to do. Or maybe you were just over at Orpheus' house so often that his mother's scoldings rubbed off on you because you hardly remember your mother caring about where your hands were as long as they were cleaned often.

Orpheus' thumb runs along your hand in the silence that you two seem to be sharing. The gesture has your heart skipping just a quick beat and your face flushing just enough for you to feel. It's pathetic really, that you still act like such an embarrassed schoolboy if you're alone with him like this, with no anger, no lust, nothing but happiness in your heart, but you wouldn't change it for the world.

"In all seriousness though, I think we should discuss where we stand right now so that none of..." you trail off with a vague gesture of your free hand, trying to find the right phrase to end your sentence.

"None of the past twenty odd years happens again? Fair enough." His voice is stiff now, formal and unwanting. He still doesn't want to look at the finer details. He never has really, not that you've been aware of. He's always avoided things until the last possible moment and you've always rushed headfirst into situations, taking the brunt force of every hit.

You wait for him. You have no reason not to now. You at least have him back in your life and that's satisfying enough for you at this moment. Later on may be hard but you'll deal with that when it comes along.

"Do you want to try the whole... dating scene?" He makes it sound so odd, like somebody your age and his can't date anymore and just thinking of it is strange. You suppose it's just his views, having been married and raised kids from that marriage, whereas you never really had an option but dating. You don't recall ever having tried after Orpheus though. You couldn't really bring yourself to think of anyone else in that perspective. _Once you go Orpheus, you can't go back_.

Did you want to try again with him? All that fuss certainly proves it and yet you still found yourself hesitating. Were you both really emotionally ready to try this immediately after clearing up the air of your past?

"There's no rush," you finally say, slowly, "This is just the beginning of our reunion." You lean into him, squeezing his hand softly. He seems fairly content with the answer, with taking things slower now that all the rush of confusing emotions is out of the way. You're fairly content with it yourself. He's tense at first but you feel the relax of his muscles as he accepts the situation, allows it to sink in. He transfer your hand to his other, wrapping his free arm around your shoulder.

It's strange still but it's familiar and you both use that to help you adjust to this again.

And even if it doesn't work out, at least you'll have him in your life again. That's all you could ever ask for at this point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so short I'm sorry


End file.
